Security firm Gemalto will offer biometric EMV payment cards to its bank customers using biometric company Fingerprint Cards’ T-Shape sensor and licensing its recently-launched Biometric Software Platform for payments.

The companies announced last week that Gemalto’s initial order confirms a shared commitment to accelerate the deployment of biometric payment cards. Gemalto’s roughly 300 digital banking clients include two U.S. megabanks and scores of second- and third-tier banks, but the industry has generally been slow to adopt biometrics for processes more complicated and less contained to consumer devices than payments.

Hakan Nordfjell, head of digital banking at Gemalto, told Bank Innovation that banking as a whole still needs to make sure biometric data can be secured — to the satisfaction of regulators — before it can be used cross-channel, meaning beyond payment cards, wearables and connected devices.

“It’s not a quick process,” he said. “When you use biometrics as we do today, on an iPhone, for instance, you use your fingerprint to unlock your phone, and you use a fingerprint or your face to open your bank. But that is always done as a match on the mobile, so you always keep the biometrics on the mobile.”

Nordfjell said while this is convenient, the data can only be used one channel at the time and cannot be reused cross-channel. He said consumer demand for faster, easier and more secure interactions with their banks will eventually help turn this tide.

Rolling out products such as payment cards with biometrics technology could whet consumers’ appetites for more biometrics across banking.

As part of its new platform, Fingerprints said it has developed a new in-house algorithm that can verify billions of touches per day, adjusting to the specific needs of payment cards and payment devices.

Fingerprints’ T-Shape sensor can be integrated into smartcards using established manufacturing processes — and without the need for a battery. The company also said its T-Shape sensor allows for storage of biometric templates and image matching to be conducted securely on the payment card, “ensuring data never leaves consumers’ control.”

“This is a turning point for biometric payment cards,” Thomas Rex, SVP Business Line Smartcards at Fingerprints, said in a statement. He said the cards will add “much-needed strong
authentication to contactless payments without impacting the user experience.”

The initial order comprises a “few hundred thousand sensors” to be delivered during 2019 and 2020, the companies said.

Research firm Goode Intelligence recently predicted that by the end of 2020, some 1.9 billion bank customers will be using biometrics for various banking services like withdrawing cash from ATMs, proving their identity over the phone or for digital onboarding, and accessing digital bank services through an increasing number of connected IoT devices.

But it’s still a rare sight to see biometrics used for processes such as account opening. Nordfjell said Gemalto is seeing some banks in countries like Mexico build up their databases with biometric data such as fingerprints, which can be collected during branch visits and, perhaps, used later for enrollment for a new product or service.

“The risk, obviously, is that you don’t want to be hacked on that,” he said. “So the security is fairly stringent around it.”

Asked what needs to happen before there is more widespread adoption of biometrics in banking, Nordfjell said a lot of players are waiting for regulatory clarity more than anything else.

“In Europe, for example, it’s not really clear what you can and cannot do other than that you are responsible for whatever you hold your database,” he said.

He also said protecting biometric data is a totally different animal from protecting personally identifiable information because of the stakes involved.

“Imagine that all of your biometric data is leaked,” Nordfjell said. “What do you have then? You don’t really have anything. If you have no other means of authentication, and that leaks, you can’t revoke it. You can change your password, but you can’t change your voice.”

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