COLOMBES, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At the Trophées des cartes innovantes 2017 card innovation awards, e-money and payment professionals awarded the trophy for most innovative technology in the “Security - Identity - Authentication” category for the F.CODE Comfort biometric payment card to IDEMIA, the global leader in trusted identities for an increasingly digital world, and Groupement des Cartes Bancaires CB.
As the number of contactless card payments continues to grow1, IDEMIA devised F.CODE Comfort, the card that uses biometric fingerprints to identify its holder, thus opening the way to raising the limit on contactless payments currently set at €30 per transaction on the French market.
F.CODE Comfort is equipped with an integrated digital fingerprint reader providing instant authentication of the cardholder on each contactless payment. This cutting-edge technology, thoroughly tested in the Lab by CB, received the accolade of e-money and payment professionals at the industry’s annual card innovation awards, the Trophées des cartes innovantes.
Above all else, IDEMIA’s F.CODE Comfort card guarantees payment security for users, alleviating potential consumer fears regarding contactless payment: the authentication generated by the biometric fingerprint frees cardholders to carry out transactions with no other payment limit than that on the card itself. The system itself is really simple to use and encourages cardholders to make more frequent use of this fast, secure and eminently practical means of payment.
Because the payment solution is so closely linked to its holder, whose identity is authenticated with every transaction, it offers the added advantage of restricting still further the opportunities for fraud.
“It is a great honour to have been awarded the ‘Security – Identification – Authentication’ trophy for our F.CODE card, as a mark of recognition from sector professionals. This innovative payment solution, which we have tested in partnership with CB, speaks directly to our mission, which is to empower consumers in an increasingly digital world to pay, identify themselves and communicate with optimum security but, above all, with the maximum simplicity,” said Eric Duforest, Executive Vice-President of Financial Institutions activities at IDEMIA.
Philippe Lalaunie, CB CEO, added: “This new-generation card is designed to extend contactless payment to higher payment thresholds thanks to biometric authentication. It is currently being trialled via LAB by CB and we are working in particular on the smoothest, but also the most secure, fingerprint enrolment process possible.”
About IDEMIA
OT-Morpho is now IDEMIA, the global leader in trusted identities for an increasingly digital world. Through Augmented Identity, we empower citizens and consumers alike to interact, pay, connect, travel and vote in ways that are now possible in a connected environment. With close to $3bn in revenues, IDEMIA serves clients in 180 countries.
About CB
CB, innovation inside
Created in 1984 to implement a universal and interoperable card payment system and a system for cash withdrawals from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), Groupement des Cartes Bancaires CB, a non-profit organisation, is the governance body of the CB card payment system. In 2016, CB numbered 112 member banks and payment institutions throughout the world.
CB is the leading payment system in France, with:
- 66.5 million CB cards in circulation,
- 57,136 ATMs,
- 1,490,144 CB merchant contracts
- 12.11 billion transactions, totalling €592.5 billion in 2016.
For further information, visit www.cartes-bancaires.com
1 Since January 2017, the number of contactless CB transactions hit 1 billion on 16 November 2017 (source: www.cartes-bancaires.com)
