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Mastercard is Building Fingerprint Scanners Directly Into Its Cards (fastcompany.com)

Mastercard said on Thursday it's beginning trials of its "next-generation biometric card" in South Africa. In addition to the standard chip and pin, the new cards have a built-in fingerprint reader that the user can use to authenticate every purchase. From a report: Impressively, the new card is no thicker or larger than your current credit and debit cards.

4 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. not foolproof by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are other things you can comment on like above, but I there are other ways this can go wrong as well.

    I have been diagnosed with bad eczema on my hands recently, and it mostly affects the tips of my fingers. The sensor on my Nexus will now periodically stop accepting my fingerprint scans until I log in with another authentication method and rescan them.

    If you don't have any backup ways to provide authentication there are cases where people will get locked out for medical reasons. That won't be extremely common I guess, but fingerprint biometric will, like all systems, not solve all problems.

  2. One day they'll discover the folly.... by Bugler412 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One day they'll discover the folly of using biometrics for authentication or authorization, but then it will be too late. Let's all tie everything to a password that we can never change right? Great idea! Sigh

  3. Re:Your machete, don't leave home without it. by avandesande · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you arm just got chopped off and you are worried about changing the authentication scheme for your credit card you have bigger problems.

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
  4. Re:About time by drdread66 · · Score: 4, Informative

    A friend of mine works for one of the companies involved in the Mastercard pilot. As I understand it, their card is powered by the chip reader, which already supplies power to the EMV chip.