Biometric ID Use With Mag Stripes May Serve As An Alternative To EMV In India

 Verification using India’s national biometric-identification system could provide a second level of authorization needed to secure card-present transactions initiated with magnetic stripe cards under a proposal outlined in a central bank working group report released June 2. It also may serve as an alternative to moving to EMV chip-and-PIN cards.

The Reserve Bank of India formed the Working Group for Securing Card Present Transactions on March 31 to create a plan to increase the security of in-store purchases. Its participants include officials from banks and card companies.

The group’s report also recommends that the country’s card issuing and acquiring infrastructures be commercially ready to accept EMV chip-and PIN cards for payment within the next two years (see story).

But as an alternative, the group proposed consideration of a system in which mag-stripe card purchases would be authorized through the Aadhaar Biometric scheme. However, such consideration should be made only if the authority behind the biometric system is able to meet with banks’ authentication requirements for card transactions at the point of sale and at ATMs within the next 18 months, the group noted.

The report’s recommendations are open to public comment until June 30, after which the central bank will publish its final guidelines.

Under Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Authority of India is providing every resident of the country an identification number ascertained after undergoing fingerprint, facial recognition and iris scans. All residents will receive an ID number, and their Aadhaar Biometric (fingerprint) information would be their banking passwords.

If the central bank adopts biometric authentication for payments, industry implementation would take less time to complete than a conversion to EMV would, the group noted in the report.

The Unique Identification Authority already has issued about 730 million Aadhaar ID numbers and expects soon to launch its banking-authentication service.

All payment networks, including Visa Inc., MasterCard Worldwide and RuPay, are working with the authority on laboratory and field tests of processing transactions with biometric verifications (see story).

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