Biometrics to now feature on credit, debit cards

Consider your cash withdrawals during the period of “demonetisation” in 2016. You must be remembering that it was a tricky method to enter your debit card PIN while hiding the num-pad of the ATM machine from prying eyes behind you, pushing each other to get a glimpse of your transaction details. If you remove that num-pad based PIN entry from the scene, no one in the world would get a clue about your debit card PIN, apart from your bank. This implementation would also make card payments at restaurants or shopping malls a lot more secure.

MasterCard is keen on embedding this basic technology on its line-up of credit and debit cards to enhancing the user security. The biometric authentication would make payments faster; similar to unlocking your smartphone with a tap instead of those complex mazes you used as your pattern password.

The demo cards are currently being tested in South Africa and MasterCard plans to roll it out to the world by the end of 2017. While the basic architecture of the card mostly remains the same, you will notice only a matte coloured sensor patch on the top left corner of the card.

Place your authorised finger on the sensor patch of the card while the payment terminal/machine asks for your confirmation and you are done. Users can have up to Two fingerprints saved on the card’s sensor for authentication purposes. As for the vendors, there’s no need to upgrade any hardware, unless you are still using the magnetic-type swipe-based transaction machine on your billing desk.