Debit Card With Built-In Fingerprint Scanner Is Now Being Tested

If you want to make a purchase, there are many ways for you to do it: from tapping your phone to entering a PIN or signing a receipt.

Well, a new method might come very soon as Gemalto, a digital security company from Netherlands is developing a debit card with built-in fingerprint scanner. When using the card, you only need to put your thumb on the scanner on the front of the card, pay at any places allowing tap-to-pay method and voila, the transaction will be just like any other normal ones.

And now this payment system is getting a real-world test. British bank NatWest is organizing a trial including 200 customers next month.

Gemalto says that your fingerprint data will always stays in the local storage of the card, which reduces the risk of being hacked. But no matter how safe it seems to be, no system, even a biometric on, can guarantee the safety of your personal information. Even fingerprints can be stolen or imitated.

But when you compare fingerprint with a PIN which is just a simple sequence paired with the card’s chip, the complexity of a fingerprint is more likely to be safer. In fact, Gemalto thinks the use of fingerprints is safe enough to dispose of tap-to-pay transactions’ maximum purchase limit.

Will it become a common kind of cards offering by more banks in the future? It’s still too soon to say. However, a card with a built-in fingerprint scanner is quite an elegant concept and futuristic concept for the coming times of financial technology.