IDEX, Infineon Announce Biometric Payment Card Reference Design

IDEX Biometrics and Infineon have announced a new, jointly-developed reference design for next-generation payment cards.

The companies have been collaborating in the emerging biometric cards space for some time, having first announced a partnership back in the autumn of 2018, aimed at exploring how their respective technologies could be combined to support the development of fingerprint-scanning payment cards.

Their new reference design is based on the combination of Infineon’s SLC38BML800 security controller and IDEX Biometrics’ TrustedBio sensor. Thanks to the speed of the SLC38BML800, the combined solution allows for biometric authorization of transactions in less than 500 milliseconds, the companies say. It also offers other advantages pertaining to energy efficiency and the manufacturing process.

“This new design provides significant improvements at the card system level, which allow easy integration into existing hot lamination card manufacturing processes,” explained Tolgahan Yildiz, the head of Infineon’s Payment and Ticketing Solutions division. “Therefore, the architecture increases card performance, while reducing manufacturing complexity at the same time.”

Yildiz went on to add that the “additional interfaces and the energy efficiency of our security controller allow industrialization of high performance biometric smart cards.”

IDEX is indicating that while TrustedBio samples are already available, mass production of the solution is expected to begin “by the end of the third quarter of 2021,” according to a statement.

Likewise, Infineon’s SLC38BML800 security controller is currently available for preorder, but mass production will not begin until “the end of 2021.”

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July 15, 2021 – by Alex Perala