Infineon Technologies AG and Fingerprint Cards AB today announced the signing of a joint development and commercialization agreement for a plug-and-play turnkey solution for biometric payment smart cards. The goal of the cooperation is to make biometric smart card production as simple and easy as producing a standard dual-interface payment card.
This comprehensive SECORA Pay Bio turnkey solution will include both Fingerprints’ FPC1323 sensor with its biometric software algorithm and Infineon’s upcoming SLC39B Secure Element. This off-the-shelf solution will come with a pre-certified Java Card operating system including Mastercard and Visa bio-applets.
With the development of the innovative Infineon Biometric Coil on Module (BCoM) package based on inductive coupling technology, the overall biometric smart card manufacturing process will be significantly simplified and the bill of the material considerably reduced. This will allow card manufacturers to use already existing card manufacturing equipment for the production of biometric payment cards and enable scalable and efficient volume production.
“Our collaboration with Infineon will further push the boundaries of producing biometric payment cards with new, innovative product designs for the mass market,” said Michel Roig, President of Payment & Access at Fingerprints. “By combining and integrating the leading components, Fingerprints’ FPC1323, and Infineon’s SLC39B security system-on-chip, into one system package, we will offer proven biometric performance executed in a single chip. This innovative and fully integrated solution will simplify, scale production, and enable worry less payments for consumers.”
“The cooperation agreement with our strategic partner Fingerprints is an important milestone in enabling easy-to-manufacture, cost-effective, and highly scalable biometric card production simply with existing tools at no additional CAPEX for our customers,” said Tolgahan Yildiz, Head of Payment Solutions at Infineon’s Connected Secure Systems Division. This milestone also ratifies Infineon’s true commitment to biometric smart cards, where we will continue to work and innovate diligently with our partners to enable a great customer journey with biometric smart cards from production and enrollment, up until payment at retail stores for secured and seamless transactions.”
ABI Research expects, in an optimistic scenario, that up to 140 million biometric payment sensor cards to be issued in 2025 fulfilling consumer demand for more convenient and secured biometric authentication in personal payment transactions. In daily life, biometric cardholders verify their identity simply by placing a finger on the card’s sensor and tapping the card at the terminal. It has the clear advantage of not requiring a PIN code during payment at a point of sale (POS) terminal. For this reason, biometric payment cards can offer more convenient, and hygienic payment experiences without the need for low transaction limits. Each transaction, starting with the first Euro, will be authorized by a second-factor authentication, dramatically reducing misuse in the case of lost or stolen cards.
SECORA Pay Bio will extend Infineon’s well-established SECORA Pay turnkey solution family to address the fast-growing segment of biometric banking cards. SLC39B is Infineon’s advanced system-on-chip (SoC) cryptoprocessor with an integrated power source, large memory size and diverse peripherals, as well as best-in-class contactless performance. The company’s BCoM is a tailored, innovative, dual-interface Coil on Module (CoM) for SECORA Pay Bio, which integrates Fingerprints’ advanced sensor and Infineon’s upcoming Secure Element into a single package. With the inductive coupling technology, no wire connection between the card antenna and the module is needed. This significantly improves the robustness and long-term reliability of biometric payment cards.
