Zwipe Teams with STS on Biometric Card Manufacturing

Zwipe has teamed up with Smart Technology Services (STS) to develop a manufacturing system for biometric payment cards.

In a statement announcing the partnership, the companies asserted that STS sees biometric payment cards as “the next major market opportunity in the payment cards industry,” adding that the French company “has developed a specific implanting module to support the embedding of biometric touch sensor modules into smartcards.”

The aim, the companies said, is to help card issuing partners to quickly deliver their biometric card solutions to market, with Zwipe and STS planning to “collaborate to develop and market packaging solutions including chip and sensor packaging, adhesion processes, equipment manufacturing, process settings, test procedures and technical assistance” for card makers and issuers.

STS also teamed up with Fingerprint Cards (FPC), another fingerprint biometrics specialist, this past spring to develop implanting equipment for that company’s sensor module for smart cards. It isn’t clear if this is the same implanting technology that will now be leveraged in the partnership with Zwipe, but the two biometrics specialists have a friendly relationship: They announced a strategic partnership on biometric smart cards in 2016, and FPC’s former CEO became Zwipe’s Chairman of the Board this past May. Earlier this month, Zwipe announced biometric card trials in the Philippines, and the fingerprint technology in that case is courtesy of FPC.

As for the Zwipe-STS partnership, the companies say they are aiming to “release and promote a complete manufacturing solution for biometric cards” in the first quarter of next year.

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November 21, 2018 – by Alex Perala