SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): Goode Intelligence research reveals that global biometric payments to the value of $5.765 trillion will be made annually by 2026. The research report goes on to say “biometrics is now a must-have technology to secure payments across all payment channels.”
“Nowhere more will biometrics technology be seen to positively impact, is in the area of credit and debit cards,” said today, SmartMetric’s President and CEO, Chaya Hendrick.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought around serious reservations about using shared PIN-PADs and POS devices in physical locations which has resulted in an acceleration of biometric payment cards even more attractive to consumers.
“The Pandemic has been a double-edged sword for us at SmartMetric. It has pushed forward the consumer demand for minimum to no contact at the checkout while using their credit or debit card, while causing significant delays because of component supply shortages and manufacturing shut downs,” said Chaya Hendrick. “We have seen an almost 3-year impact on our biometric card business but we have now turned the corner in our card manufacturing,” said SmartMetric’s President. SmartMetric’s current manufacturing capacity is more than 1 million biometric cards a month.
The impact on touchless contactless payments is obvious. With a biometric contactless card the card user is affirmatively 100 percent identified by their fingerprint biometrics. A non-biometric contactless credit or debit card is inherently insecure. Reports and cases of card data theft from RFID data stealing from the card has made banks restrict the dollar amount per card transaction in order to mitigate the contactless card risk. With a biometric activated card like that made by SmartMetric, the risk of contactless cards for banks is greatly reduced as the card can only work following an on-card biometric fingerprint match.
The SmartMetric biometric credit/debit card has engineered into the card three power sources. A miniature hybrid solid state battery, a power feed from contact readers when the card is inserted into a contact store reader or a regular ATM and the contactless energy harvesting from contactless card readers.
The SmartMetric card uses an almost paper-thin hybrid solid state battery connected to an advanced rapid charge power management system inside the card that allows the card to scan and match a person’s fingerprint biometrics before the card is inserted inside an instore card reader, ATM or Gas Pump reader. Making it the first and only biometric card solution that will work across all of these credit/debit card reading devices, in the world.
SmartMetric’s Biometric card addresses the multibillion existing chip-based credit and debit card market. Figurespublished by EMVCo 2 reveal that by year end of 2020, 10.8 billion EMV® chip cards have been issued by financial institutions and were in global circulation – a massive increase of nearly 1 billion credit and debit EMV® cards compared to the previous twelve months.