MasterCard Partners With Zwipe To “Unveil” Biometric Credit Card

There has been a lot of security breaches recently, because of this there is more and more consumer demand for increased security especially when it comes to sensitive payment data such as credit card information. MasterCard has recently partnered with Zwipe to launch the first credit card that requires consumers to use their unique fingerprint (in this case their thumbprint) to complete a contactless payment.

  • Current cards are thicker than a standard credit card. This is because they have an in built battery which is used to operate.
  • Because the current cards are thicker, they are only really able to be used for contactless payments (which is currently uncommon in the United States but picking up steam for small payments in Australia & Europe. Softcard and Apple Pay are the biggest examples of this NFC technology)
  • Zwipe hopes to offer a standard credit card which can be used in all terminals “some time next year”. They’ll do this by powering the card through the payment terminal itself rather than requiring an in built battery
  • Your finger print will need to be recorded at a bank. This data is then stored on the card itself rather than a central database

My Thoughts

This type of technology is current more of a gimmick than actually useful from a security stand point. Biometric technology (especially at this micro level) isn’t at the stage where it works 100% of the time. The fact that it can’t currently be used in all payment terminals is another reason that this isn’t really a useful product.

Personally I wish MasterCard would focus on getting all of their card issuers over to the EMV chip + PIN standard, as this has been proven to reduce fraud rates in other markets where it has been adopted.

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