Mastercard has developed a solution for consumers to register their fingerprint onto a biometric card from their home, saving them from a trip to a bank branch.

The payments giant wants to eliminate the use of passwords, driving use of biometrics such as fingerprints, facial recognition and iris scans. Mastercard’s new technology, a battery-powered sleeve, will let people self-enrol their contact or contactless biometric card. Their fingerprint is scanned by the sensor on the card and an encrypted digital template is created and securely stored.

Mastercard hopes the new technology will speed the adoption of biometrics by issuers and consumers. Issuers will be able to roll out biometric cards at scale without requiring additional infrastructure in branches.

With the biometric card, consumers get a secure experience at any EMV terminal either by contact or contactless payment. Issuers benefit from improved fraud detection and prevention, approval rates and customer loyalty. The biometric card also works with existing EMV card terminals so there is no additional cost or burden for merchants.

Bob Reany, executive vice president of identity solutions at Mastercard, said: “The card draws power from the payment terminal so it can be used anywhere, we use a flexible biometric scanner so it’s more durable, and now we have a sleeve to register fingerprints so people don’t have to make a trip to a bank branch.”

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