Gemalto to Launch Biometric Dual Interface Payment Cards for Bank of Cyprus

Gemalto is going to provide biometric payment cards for the Bank of Cyprus, the company has announced.

The payment cards will feature embedded fingerprint sensors, and will support chip-based and contactless payments. Bank of Cyprus customers will be able to enroll their biometrics for their new payment cards at bank branches, and will thereafter be able to benefit from the security of biometric authentication for each transaction.

It’s poised to be one of the first major commercial deployments of biometric payment card technology, which is expected to enjoy a boom over the coming year as major players like Mastercard introduce such solutions to the mass market. In a statement announcing the project, Gemalto did not indicate when the cards will be available to Bank of Cyprus customers, but Gemalto Banking and Payment EVP Bertrand Knopf asserted that “Bank of Cyprus customers will be first in the world to enjoy biometric convenience on a contactless payment card,” suggesting that the cards’ launch is imminent. Mastercard’s biometric partner IDEX, meanwhile, has suggested that their biometric payment card solution will be rolled out in early 2018 as well.

Knopf added that using fingerprint authentication for contactless payments “allows a better user experience, enabling higher transaction amounts without entering a PIN”.

The news comes soon after Gemalto announced that its Trusted Services Hub can be used as a gateway for Mastercard and Visa tokenization services, a move that further solidified Gemalto’s position in the payments market.

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January 4, 2018 – by Alex Perala