“…we are in the process of building a sustainable network with leading players in the smart card ecosystem to commercialize biometric dual interface technology in the banking sector and beyond.” – Alain Faburel, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, NEXT Biometrics

NEXT Biometrics has another partner in the emerging biometric payment cards market: The company has announced that it has teamed up with M-Tech Innovations, an India-based smart card maker.

In announcing the partnership, NEXT Biometrics noted that M-Tech is a payment card manufacturer certified by Mastercard, Visa, and RuPay, India’s major domestic card scheme. It also indicated that M-Tech provides solutions used in “government, access control, high-security and many more applications”, according to a statement. Those additional applications could point the way to opportunities related to Aadhaar, India’s biometric national ID program – a market area that NEXT has already been targeting with its fingerprint sensor technology.

News of the partnership comes after NEXT announced another collaboration with an India-based firm in December; and after its announcement in late January that it will start sampling biometric payment cards in the second quarter of this year.

Commenting on the new development, NEXT Biometrics Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Alain Faburel emphasized “the strong growth potential that this partnership offers,” adding, “As outlined at the January 2019 Business Update, we are in the process of building a sustainable network with leading players in the smart card ecosystem to commercialize biometric dual interface technology in the banking sector and beyond.”