Thales announces the launch of a new Biometric Payment Card

By Joy Dumasia

Thales has helped banks to constantly reinvent the card itself and offer the best payment experience. This new innovative card, which integrates a biometric sensor, provides users with increased security and convenience. This latest generation of cards represents a key milestone in the payment space.

The contactless biometric card dramatically simplifies proximity payments and also provides a basic level of privacy and confidence. The user’s fingerprint data is loaded on the card via a secure and straightforward personal enrollment process, carried out from home or at a bank branch. In addition, none of the biometric details used for the enrolment is shared with any third party; the fingerprint in the card’s chip is only used to provide a local authentication of the cardholder when paying contactless.

The biometric card ultimately means that a lost or stolen card is useless without the owner’s fingerprint to authenticate a contactless transaction. In such trustworthy payment environments, there is no need to set any payment limit.

The Thales EMV contactless biometric payment card is the only solution fully certified by significant EMV payment schemes like MasterCard and Visa.

Bertrand Knopf, SVP Banking and Payment Solutions at Thales said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the Tech sector to develop touchless solutions and has indirectly resulted in higher transaction levels being processed without a second authentication factor. The biometric payment card allows contactless payment for any amount while safeguarding the privacy of this very personal data.”

Recently, IBS Intelligence reported that Digital security solutions provider Thales has rolled out its Identity Verification Suite to cater to the rising need for remote client onboarding. The Suite is expected to enable a 100%-AI identity verification service to integrate facial recognition technology, document security features recognition and machine learning engines.