Visa develops a new spec that enables palm, voice, eye and facial biometrics with chip card payment
It’s the stuff movies are made from: fingerprint recognition, iris-scan access control, voice print identification. Biometrics have finally caught up with Hollywood imaginations and are making their way into our everyday lives. Think payments: Visa has now launched a first-of-its-kind technology framework designed to use biometrics with chip card transactions. The new specification enables palm, voice, iris or facial biometrics and works with the EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) chip industry standard.
The first pilot went into effect this fall in South Africa, with Absa Bank, where cardholders willuse their fingerprint rather than a PIN code to access their accounts on select ATMs. Why South Africa? The banking infrastructure there is still maturing and there has been strong interest to test out new technologies that will prevent fraud and encourage easier access to banking.
“There is increasing demand for biometrics as a more convenient and secure alternative to signatures or PINs, especially as biometrics technologies have become more reliable and available,” says Mark Nelsen, senior vice president of Risk Products and Business Intelligence at Visa.
Here’s how it works: Visa’s new architecture enables fingerprints to be securely accepted by a biometric reader, encrypted, and then validated. The specification supports “match-on-card” authentication where the EMV chip card validates the biometric so that it is never exposed or stored in any central databases. Issuers can optionally validate the biometric data within their secure systems for transactions occurring in their own environments, such as their own ATMs.
Because Visa’s design is built on the EMV chip standard, the biometric validation seamlessly integrates with the technology used by 3.3 billion chip cards around the world. Financial institutions, solution providers, and others in the payments ecosystem can rely on an interoperable and consistent infrastructure for supporting biometrics.
“To support wide adoption, it is equally important that solutions are scalable and based on open standards. Building on the EMV chip standard provides a common, interoperable foundation, as well as encourages innovation in cutting-edge biometric solution,” adds Nelsen.
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Fonte: http://visatechmatters.tumblr.com
