It's hard not to be skeptical of U.S.-based SmartMetric's claim that as the "world's first credit/debit card with embedded fingerprint scanner" their product will "replace today's ATM card," as typical of the hype that's plagued biometrics in the last decade.
But as a new biometric form factor, and a clear advance in smart card technology, SmartMetric bears some consideration. In short, the company has built smart cards that have both fingerprint sensors and card readers built into the card. When a user wants to initiate an authenticated transaction, he or she must press a finger onto the reader-up to 10 fingers can be registered-and wait a couple of seconds for the reader to verify the minutiae points that uniquely identify that card holder. When positive identification is made the card is then enabled for transactions.
SmartMetric might rightfully be accused of overzealous marketing- given that the product is currently in prototype phase with no signed deployments-but analysts say the technology has potential applications in payments and physical and network security because it acts as a portable positive identification card in both a contact and contactless environment, and can be used offline because it doesn't require biometrics to be stored in or retrieved from a database.
"As a card design and development prototype, it's ideal because of the portable identity aspect of it," says Sapna Capoor, biometrics analyst for Frost & Sullivan. "There are a couple of issues with it, such as cost and how it would be leveraged into the current payments system."
Other issues include the durability of the fingerprint sensor located on the card, battery life and the cost to produce the cards. "The most sensitive part of a biometric system is the sensor, and that costs money," says Christer Bergman, president and CEO of competitor Precise Biometrics, which sells a biometric smart card product that stores the identity data on the card but requires a separate biometric sensor. "That area sensor is a square piece of silicon. What happens if you bend that card? That sensor is going to be crashed."
SmartMetric CEO Colin Hendrick declined to offer pricing information on the biometric-equipped cards, but said he believed the pricing is conducive to widespread consumer deployment by a bank or card issuer.
Payments industry analysts Mercator also highlighted Smart Metric in a recent report on biometrics comparing the technology to m-commerce applications in Europe. "We know that overseas, when a similar biometric capability has been added to consumer-held mobile phones, that second-factor authentication functionality has been fairly popular for payment transactions and mobile banking," says Melanie Broad, research analyst at Mercator Advisory Group. "We also anticipate that the ability of biometrics to add an additional authenticating factor to a transaction or to replace something like a PIN is going to be a large part of its appeal in payments going forward."
Hendrick envisions the card becoming integral to securing e-commerce; equipped with a radio frequency transmitter in a contactless access control system; and as a national identity card that can help ensure homeland security. In the e-commerce application, Hendrick says the company could package the biometric-enabled smart card with an USB-reader and sell direct to consumers for $69. The card would behave similarly to online wallets of the past, with personal information encrypted on the card, and exchanged in encrypted format with the merchant site only when the owner of the card puts the card into the USB reader and then presses a finger on the card to authenticate.
The only large-scale deployment of biometrics in payments at this time is Pay By Touch which has more than 2 million registered users from a variety of national and regional chains. Pay By Touch allows consumers to authorize direct debits from their checking account after they have a finger scanned and enter a seven-digit identification number, usually their home phone number. This approach has the advantage of not requiring a card, but the disadvantage of requiring an online connection to Pay By Touch's data center to make the match between the registered consumer and the submitted finger scan.
