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POST Biometrics could be the nail in the plastic card's coffin

The combination o

FingoPay is cutting out the middlemen (the bank cards, the smartphones and smartwatches), to let you pay with – you guessed it – your finger.

From FingoPay: Move over Apple Pay, 'Blood Pay' is here

The use vein-scanning as the non-contact biometric.

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I also told [the BBC], in the spirit of openness and integrity that is associated with the good name of Consult Hyperion throughout the civilised world, that we had been retained by Hitachi some years ago to carry out a study on the security of this product and its suitability for certain financial services applications.

From We'll be giving Barclays the finger next year | Consult Hyperion

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Biometrics continue to advance in Japan with the news that Hitachi is teaming with Japanese issuer JCB to develop a biometric payment system based on its finger vein authentication technology that can be used as an alternative to cards and cash at the point of sale.

From Fingering suspects | Consult Hyperion

As you will see in this piece, I was sceptical about biometric identification at retail POS because back then the use of biometric authentication against a revocable token seemed like a much better solution to me.

2009

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So, a plausible idea for son-of-chip-and-PIN, taking on board Max’s idea and merging it with our experiences gained implementing and doing security risk analysis for EMV schemes in a number of countries, might be as follows:

For micropayment, cash-replacement transactions: just wave the token (well, let’s say it, the mobile phone); For mesopayment, card-replacement transactions: enter the PIN, preferably into the mobile phone not the terminal, then wave the phone over the terminal; For megapayment, EFT-replacement transactions: enter the PIN, put the phone on the terminal and then put your finger in a vein scanner (such as the Hitachi system used in Japan).

This is a practical solution to the mass market use of biometrics, and you can make it work online as well by using challenge/response voice biometrics instead of vein scanning.

From The long and short of it | Consult Hyperion

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Festival - put token on file for four days - use fingerprint - have it all deleted at the end

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