China Construction Bank to Use IDEX Biometrics Sensor in Digital RMB Wallet Trials

IDEX Biometrics is reinforcing its position in the China market, announcing that its technology is being used in another digital currency pilot program in the country.

China Construction Bank, which is involved in the development of China’s Digital Currency Electronic Payment infrastructure, is using smart cards in digital renminbi trials, with the cards essentially serving as a physical wallet for the digital currency. And, in certain of these trials, CCB has opted to secure the wallets with fingerprint sensors and biometric software provided by IDEX.

It’s much the same approach as the one taken by Postal Savings Bank of China, which opted to use IDEX Biometrics technology in a hardware wallet for a digital RMB trial earlier this year. Likewise with respect to a digital wallet from Chutian Dragon, which also opted to integrate fingerprint recognition technology from IDEX in a more recent deal.

DCEP is a digital version of China’s national currency, analogous to the increasingly popular stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded alongside the like of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Various efforts are currently underway to develop the concept, with numerous parties in China looking to physical hardware wallet cards as a means for end users to effectively store their digital renminbi holdings.

As IDEX explained in a statement announcing the order from China Construction Bank, integrating biometric security into these hardware wallets is a means of further inspiring confidence in their security over the “soft wallets” available in the form of mobile apps, and thereby allowing for higher transaction limits.

Commenting further, IDEX CEO Vince Graziani framed the emerging digital currency effort as an expanded addressable market beyond the nascent biometric payment cards market that IDEX was already targeting with its TrustedBio fingerprint sensor solution.

“Low cost and easy to use hardware wallets are the perfect solution for enabling the DCEP initiative to reach those who do not have access to a smartphone or a bank, who would be otherwise left behind in a digital currency world,” he said. “The emerging hardware wallet application is an incremental market opportunity beyond the already large market for biometric payment cards.”

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June 18, 2021 – by Alex Perala