Skip to main content

MasterCard launches Credit Card with Built-In Fingerprint Scanner




MasterCard has unveiled its brand new payment card that has a built-in biometric fingerprint scanner, allowing customers to authorize payments with their fingerprint, without requiring a PIN code or a signature.

The company is already testing the new biometric payment cards, combined with the on-board chips, in South Africa and says it hopes to roll out the new cards to the rest of the world by the end of 2017.

Don't Worry, It Still Supports PIN-based Transactions as Fallback

Wait — If you think that this feature would not allow you to share your card with your child and spouse, don’t worry — Mastercard has a solution for this issue as well.

The company has confirmed that even if the card is configured to expect the fingerprint for authenticating a purchase, but it does still have a PIN as a fallback, in case, for some reason EMV readers fail to read fingerprint or you have yourself handed it to your child for shopping.


Stores & Retailers Don't Need New Hardware

According to Mastercard, the new biometric payment card will not require store owners and businesses to buy any new hardware, like fingerprint scanners, because the sensor in the card reads your fingerprint.

Since both the data and the scanner exist on the same card, the new payment cards work with existing EMV card terminal infrastructure — the standard chip/swipe readers you can find at many stores these days, though old magnetic stripe-only terminals won't be compatible.

But, Banks Need to Adopt New Technology

Before this new cards can be adopted worldwide, your banks or financial institution will have to get on board with the new tech.

If you want the new biometric card, you are currently required to go to your bank branch in order to have your fingers scanned and registered for the new tech. Your fingerprints will then be converted into an encrypted digital template that is stored on the card's EMV chip.

You can save up to two fingerprints, but both would have to be yours — you can not authorise someone else, even from your family, to use your card with their fingers.

How MasterCard Biometric Payment Card Works


 YouTube Video >>

 Once your templates are saved, your card is ready to be used at compatible terminals across the world.

Merchants don't have to purchase new equipment to accept your fingerprint-enabled payment card but will have to update their machinery in an effort to use the new tech.

Now, while shopping at any store, just place your biometric payment card into a retailer's EMV terminal and then put your finger on the embedded sensor to pay. Your fingerprints will be verified against a template stored on your card to approve your transaction.

Can Fingerprints be Forged? And Other Concerns...

This new card is made in an attempt to make face-to-face payments more convenient and more secure, but this type of biometric verification is useless when it comes to online shopping, and so, does not provide any security over credit card frauds.
"Whether unlocking a smartphone or shopping online, the fingerprint is helping to deliver additional convenience and security," MasterCard security chief Ajay Bhalla said. "[A fingerprint is] not something that can be taken or replicated and will help our cardholders get on with their lives knowing their payments are protected."
But that isn't true.

In addition to biometric cards, MasterCard is also planning to bring contactless payments, which should function similar to mobile payments like Apple Pay where users authenticate themselves via fingerprint while holding their smartphones against the terminal.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE :



Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chrome Web Browser Will Now Use 10% More RAM With Spectre Fix

A new security feature named ‘Site Isolation’ has been introduced for Google Chrome 67 which would nullify the effects of speculative execution side-channel attacks like Spectre. To put things to the perspective, Spectre is one of the two fundamental design flaws in the  modern processors, which allow programs to get access to the data for which it is not authorized. Malicious data can exploit this flaw to steal your password and other personal information. What is Site Isolation? The new Site Isolation feature introduced in Google Chrome 67 brings about a fundamental change to Chrome’s architecture. Now, Chrome has changed how its multi-process architecture worked and different tabs used different render processes. According to the new architecture, Chrome limits each renderer process to a single site. By this separation of processes, Google aims to prevent direct memory reading across different processes to safeguard users’ data. According to G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazon, Reddit And Others Fail To Warn Us About Dumb Passwords

B elieve it or not, there is still a large number of people who use passwords such as “password,” “password123”, “[dog’s name]1” and others along the same lines. And in the era of sophisticated hacking, these passwords are not exactly “safe.” Before me, this is the first thing websites should inform you while setting up a password. But apparently, many big names are not doing enough to encourage non-terrible passwords, according to  the new research . Steve Furnell from the University of Plymouth has been keeping tabs on the websites like Amazon, Reddit, and Wikipedia for many years, carrying out similar assessments in 2007, 2011 and 2014. His 2018 survey examined practices of Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Microsoft Live, and Netflix. The study concluded that Amazon had the worst performance among all the names. It nearly accepted every kind of password of any length. On the other hand, Yahoo and Wikip...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is Microsoft Working On A New “Next-generation OS”? Should I Really Get Excited?

I n an announcement that’ll surely spark the interest of Windows enthusiasts, Synaptics hinted at a new “next-generation” operating system from Microsoft. This announcement took place during a conference, where Synaptics and AMD shared their plans to work together to secure the operating systems with a new kind of fingerprint sensor. Here’s what the press release from Synaptics actually said: Further, the new “biometric security OS” gets a mention again along with Windows Hello. The partnership with AMD will reportedly let Synaptics use FS7600 Match-in-Sensor technology, which is completely isolated from the rest of the system and operating system for extra security. It goes without saying that you need to take this news with an extra pinch of salt than the regular rumors that keep making rounds. The next-gen OS from Microsoft could be merely the next significant Windows 10 upgrade. In case you’re a person who loves to think more positively, ...
Post a Comment
Read more