A few years back when Apple reveals the Touch ID technology, the whole smartphone industry shook off. Now the bank of Natwest, which is situated at Britain is launching the worlds first ever fingerprint scanner debit card.
The Natwest bank is planning to start its trial on mid of April. At this moment, they will offer only 200 customers to use this feature. This will allow the selected users to make NFC payments without the need of entering their PIN number or their signature. Over in UK, if you want to use the contactless payments method, you will be charged 30 pounds for each transaction. However, using this fingerprint scanner debit card, you don’t have to worry about the additional 30 pounds being charged to your card.
This card is a very special one because you do not have to worry about security. Your fingerprint data is locally stored on the card. Hackers would not be able to steal your account information from the bank’s database. However, there is a risk where the thief can steal and duplicate your fingerprint. Even
Trial run conducted over the past two years
Over these days, biometrics authentication is being used everywhere we go. From unlocking your mobile phones to paying using your ApplePay all we use is biometrics. In 2017, the company Gemalto did a trial run at South Africa. Gemalto has also conducted another pilot test at Italy in 2018 by having the fingerprint on the credit card. Anyhow, their cards had required the users to visit the bank to register before using the feature.
Even Natwest also having the same registration difficulty. Each of the participants has to go to the bank to register their fingerprint. Gemalto hopes in the future cards can be registered online using the user’s smartphone. You might be thinking you can directly use the Apple Pay to do NFC payments what is the need of the fingerprint scanner debit card. They believe that this scheme has the potential to be made available to people who can’t afford a smartphone.
