Collaboration to drive mass deployment of biometric cards

14th August 2020

Alex Lynn

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Biometric cards with integrated fingerprint sensor make contactless payments more convenient, more secure and hygienic. The contactless card remains in the hands of the cardholder throughout the entire payment transaction, while eliminating the need for PIN entries or signatures to authorise even high-value payments.

Infineon Technologies and Fingerprint Cards have joined forces to enable mass deployment of this emerging solution.

The companies aim to use their related software to provide card makers with biometric semiconductor solutions which make integration particularly cost-efficient and scalable. The fingerprint information is stored on the card’s embedded secure element and not shared with any third party, thus protecting the user’s credentials.

“Authorising payments without handing over the card is a huge step forward in terms of user experience, data security and hygiene. We selected Fingerprints as they are the leading biometric silicon and technology provider with market proven performance. Jointly, we want to to drive the industrialisation of biometric payment cards from a niche into mass market rollout,” said Bjoern Scharfen, Head of the Payment and Transport Ticketing product line at Infineon.

“Combining Fingerprints’ leading biometric technology with our expertise in chip security, energy efficiency and contactless performance, we will develop a system solution that is easy to integrate and gives our customers a head start in an emerging growth market.”

“Collaboration is key in the payment ecosystem, in which Infineon is a leading player. Together we will produce an optimised solution that will make it easier for card manufacturers to integrate biometrics into future generations of contactless payment cards, ultimately putting these cards into the hands of consumers around the world to enable a worry-free payment experience,” added Michel Roig, SVP Business Line Payments & Access at Fingerprints.

Fingerprints’ sensor modules, combined with Infineon’s 40 nm high-performance and energy-efficient security controllers based on the 32-bit ARM SecurCore SC300, fully support the requirements of biometric payment cards. They enable:

Secured matching of the fingerprint image within the security controller where the private data is securely stored.
Excellent contactless performance despite the increased power required.
Convenient and reliable enrollment of sensitive biometric data in the card.

Almost every second payment card with a chip worldwide has an Infineon security controller at its core Infineon also supplied chip solutions for major biometric card projects and pilots in 2020.