Morpho (Safran) has teamed up with Visa to develop new payment concepts, the companies have announced. They unveiled the partnership at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where they are demonstrating several new ideas.

While the collaboration could involve work on a range of technological frontiers including tokenization and digital signatures, the companies’ efforts have so far centered around biometric technology. One of the key payment concepts being demonstrated at MWC is the use of MorphoWave for proximity payments; the technology can scan and match four fingerprints without any sensor contact, and if that data were linked to payment accounts, transactions could be conducted with the wave of a hand.

Commenting on the new partnership in a statement, Morpho CEO Anne Bouverot said her company is “excited to work with Visa as a technology partner, as part of an agreement to bring innovation to the explosive market of digital payment and banking,” adding, “We are convinced by the potential of biometrics as a cornerstone technology for the future of secure payments.”

Elaborating on this last point, Bouverot referred to Morpho’s efforts not just with the MorphoWave scanner, but in developing a selfie-based authentication system for mobile devices, which is slated to appear on Samsung Android as well as iOS devices. It all reflects a bigger push on Morpho’s part into the mobile world, where the company is betting that biometrics will play a growing role going forward, as well as Visa’s increasing interest in exploring new technologies for digital payments.