The partnership between IDEX ASA and Card Tech has born fruit, in the form of a new Smart Card ready for mass production. The partnership started in July of this year, with biometric technology developer IDEX agreeing to provide fingerprint sensor technology to Card Tech for incorporation into a digital card, and now the companies are ready to show off the new Smart Card at the Cartes Secure Connexions 2014 conference in Paris.
Speaking about the move, IDEX advisory council member Michael Barrett – who is also president of the FIDO Alliance – suggested that it was in anticipating of market and industry trends towards biometric security. “The very nature of the Internet and mobile technology is changing,” he said, explaining that “open standards are finally enabling very large scale deployments.”
He has a point. With the mobile revolution in full swing, commerce is moving into the online world of mobile devices, and with it, so is fraud. And with digital payment systems like Apple Pay leading the charge via Apple’s mobile devices, with their built-in fingerprint sensors adding an extra layer of security, consumers are getting accustomed to the idea that this kind of security should go hand-in-hand with digital and contactless payments.
The Smart Card’s SmartFinger sensor – the thing that IDEX provided – notably has ISO 7810ID-1 compliance, meaning it meets the international standard used by most payment cards. Neither IDEX nor Card Tech have yet announced major partnerships with payment card companies, but they have indicated that they’ve found a major manufacturing partner, and with companies like MasterCard poised to launch biometric credit cards next year, the Smart Card would appear to be in a very good position in the market.
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