A collaboration between IDEX Biometrics and Secure Element specialist Tongxin Microelectronics Co. (TMC) is starting to pay off, with the companies’ technologies being used in a biometric payment card solution that has now received certification from China UnionPay.

“This certification uses TMC’s most advanced secure element and we expect to see it in many biometric cards in the future,” explained IDEX Biometrics CEO Vince Graziani in a statement announcing the achievement. “When combined with IDEX’s TrustedBio solution it enables a high performance solution which fully leverages the level of flexibility and integration in our next generation product to provide the lowest cost solution and industry leading performance.”

The companies first announced their partnership in the spring of last year, with their collaboration aimed at enabling biometric matching on payment cards both in the microcontroller unit and the Secure Element. The combined technologies also simplify the manufacturing process, IDEX said.

The certification’s announcement comes just a couple of weeks after the news that IDEMIA and Zwipe had successfully produced initial samples of a chip for biometric cards and were preparing a pilot launch for later this year. The biometric cards used in the project will feature IDEX Biometrics fingerprint sensors, further signalling the company’s prominence in the emerging biometric cards market.

For TMC’s part, VP John Zou would seem to agree. “We see IDEX as a critical partner for driving the adoption of biometric cards, especially in China and the broader Asia Pacific region,” he said.

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(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)