Verifone Brings Face and Palm-Vein Payment Devices to Australia

Verifone is bringing biometric payment acceptance to Australia, with its Victa range of devices supporting facial and palm-vein verification at the checkout.

The company describes Victa as the first payment device in Australia with built-in biometric capability, and the country as one of the first markets in Asia-Pacific to receive the technology after a New Zealand launch last month. Devices will reach merchants through Verifone’s banking and acquiring partners in the coming months.

Biometric payment and loyalty check-in are optional. A consumer enrols through a participating provider such as a merchant, digital wallet or bank and gives consent during that process. At the checkout an enrolled shopper actively selects the biometric option and presents a face or palm, and the system verifies them against the enrolled profile. That profile is held by the provider through which the consumer enrolled rather than by the terminal. Card, phone and PIN payments remain available alongside it.

“People already use biometrics to unlock phones, access apps and confirm payments online. We’re giving customers that same choice at the point of sale,” said Kristy Gregory, head of strategic partners at Verifone.

Biometrics sit alongside other functions on the platform, which supports loyalty without a physical card, ordering, split payments, donations and third-party applications. “Victa runs on Verifone’s secure operating system, so third-party developers can build value-added services directly onto the platform,” said Ben Hughes, head of product for Asia Pacific, who pointed to loyalty applications and alternative payment methods already running in New Zealand.

The range spans portable and mobile units, a merchant-facing register, a customer-facing lane device, and ruggedised and unattended models for kiosks, vending, transit and parking. The devices carry PCI PTS 7.x certification with point-to-point encryption and tokenisation, and are built with 60 percent recycled plastics and field-replaceable batteries, with a rated battery life of at least 12 hours and haptic and audio cues for screen navigation.

Face and palm acceptance has been spreading through retail payments, with Eftpos New Zealand launching terminals built for face and palm payments, Alipay running contactless palm print payments in China, and Kazakhstan setting palm-vein rules for banking.

Sources: GlobeNewswire

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team