SmartMetric Makes Biometric Credit Cards Which Read Your Fingerprint and Charge When You Pay for Things

SmartMetric has developed thin electronic components and circuit boards to turn a credit or debit card into “an advanced powerful electronic device” with built-in biometrics, processing, and gigabytes of memory.

In order to build a functional fingerprint reader which fits inside a plastic card, SmartMetric had to develop incredibly thin electronics mounted on an even thinner multi-layer circuit board — which isn’t much thicker than sheet paper.

How the biometric credit cards work: charge-when-you-pay; validate with thumb

The SmartMetric fingerprint biometric scanner sits inside the credit/debit card and is powered by a Cortex processor mounted on the internal circuit board.

The card’s internal electronics also have a sophisticated power management system that allows for a rapid charge of the card’s internal battery every time the card is inserted into a card reader or ATM.

SmartMetric has designed its card to operated the fingerprint scan, validation and activation totally independently of card readers.

This allows the SmartMetric card to be used in all types of both contact and contactless card readers including ATMs, the company says.

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Since the card’s fingerprint scanner is a self-contained electronic device built inside the card itself, the card user’s fingerprint is stored inside the card. This adds protection to the card user’s fingerprint biometrics.

The company says they are now actively working with RedSys ADVANTIS in introducing the SmartMetric advanced biometric credit/debit card to the more than five hundred banking organizations around the world who are using the ADVANTIS card chip and operating system in their credit/debit cards.

ADVANTIS chips with the ADVANTIS payments operating system is now on more than 1.4 billion issued credit/debit cards globally.

The SmartMetric biometric card solution for Banks provides a huge leap forward in credit card security moving security away from PINs and signatures to the vastly stronger biometric validation technology inside the card. — Company press release