Your credit card may soon get a fingerprint reader — thanks to Samsung's new chip

Your credit carte du jour may shortly get a fingerprint reader — thanks to Samsung's new chip

Samsung Smart All-in-One Fingerprint Security IC for Biometric Payment Cards

(Image credit: Samsung)

Samsung has unveiled a new chipset that may speed the sluggish adoption of fingerprint readers on credit cards and other payment cards.

Credit-card fingerprint readers accept been effectually for a few years — MasterCard began trials in 2017, and British depository financial institution NatWest in 2019 — only they don't seem to have defenseless on with card issuers or carte users.

Samsung hopes its chipset volition finally spur widespread adoption of biometric-enabled credit cards. The entreatment seems to exist that the chipset combines the fingerprint sensor, secure element and central processor into a unmarried unit, rather than having them as three split up chips as exists on another biometric-enabled payment cards.

"With the three key functions integrated in a single chip, the S3B512C [integrated circuit] can assist card manufacturers reduce the number of chips required and optimize card pattern processes for biometric payment cards," Samsung said in a blog post.

Samsung fingerprint credit card chip — (Image credit: Samsung )

This applies only to "chipped" EMV payment cards, which have been widely used in nearly of the globe for more than than 15 years. The U.S. began shifting to EMV cards effectually 2015, simply the older magnetic-stripe swipe cards are still widely supported.

In the same blog post, Samsung Electronics Vice President of System LSI Marketing Kenny Han pointed out that the chipset "is primarily designed for payment cards but tin also exist used in cards that crave highly secured authentications such as student or employee identification, membership or edifice access."

Fingerprint-enabled credit cards are intended to cutting down on theft and impersonation, every bit the fingerprint supposedly verifies the card user'due south identity and "removes the demand to enter a Pivot on a keypad" or, in the U.South., a signature.

Many fingerprint readers can be fooled by safety fingerprint overlays, but Samsung said that its chip's "anti-spoofing technology prevents unauthorized users from circumventing the security system with illegitimate methods such equally bogus fingerprints."

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom'due south Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the data-security space for more fifteen years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upward in random TV news spots and even chastened a panel discussion at the CEDIA domicile-technology conference. You tin follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.