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A British government official is floating the idea of putting an electronic payment system onto the nation's biometric identification cards. James Hall, chief executive of the UK's Identity and Passport Service, told the BBC Tuesday that the agency is in "discussions with the financial services industry" about putting chip-and-PIN technology onto the cards, which already contain mathematical representations of fingerprints and other personal data. Hall appeared to put responsibility for proposing such a scheme into the hands of banks and payments companies. "If they come forward with a compelling view of the rationale for chip-and-PIN for them, that's definitely something we'll take extremely seriously," he told the BBC. Chip-and-PIN is a scheme designed to combat payment card fraud, and Hall said putting the technology onto national ID could better protect shoppers and ATM users, according to the BBC report. Hall's agency offered no immediate comment to CardLine Global. The UK's national ID scheme has attracted a storm of criticism over privacy concerns and technical feasibility and has seen its goals regularly rolled back. For instance, officials predicted they would issue at least 40,000 cards to foreign nationals by 31 March, but fewer than 23,000 cards have been issued.
