ST and Fingerprint Cards team up to launch advanced biometric payment card solution

Semiconductor supplier STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) and Fingerprint Cards AB (Fingerprints), a world-leading biometric technology company, have collaborated to develop an advanced biometric system-on-card (BSoC) solution based on fingerprint recognition technology to meet market requirements for improved security and convenience of contactless payment cards.

The BSoC system combines STMicroelectronics' latest generation of secure payment technology based on ST31/STPay chipsets and STM32 general-purpose microcontrollers with Fingerprints' next-generation T-shaped sensor modules to provide a complete battery-free secure payment solution for the banking market.

“Biometric authentication is a cost-effective and user-friendly technology that can significantly improve the security and convenience of banking transactions, allowing banks to increase or remove transaction limits on contactless payments,” said Laurent Degauque, Marketing Director for Secure Microcontrollers at STMicroelectronics. “Fingerprint Cards brings to this collaboration its valuable R&D experience and proven expertise in contactless payment solutions for battery-free and space-constrained devices. Their products, with their high processing power and low energy consumption, are an ideal complement to our STPay payment card solution.”

Contactless payment cards will be the primary target application for the co-development agreement, and the parties are also interested in exploring other markets such as ID cards, health cards, access cards and transportation cards.

Michel Roig, Senior Vice President of Payments and Access at Fingerprint Cards, added: “This is a strong collaboration to innovate and optimize contactless payment solutions, making it easier for card providers to integrate biometrics into their products while also reducing the total cost. Ultimately, the increased security of contactless payments will give consumers a worry-free payment experience.”

ST’s STPay secure payment products run ST’s flexible Java Card™/GlobalPlatform® operating system (OS), ensuring that the cards can support a variety of international and regional payment schemes, with market-proven and reliable security features built in. The STPay solution has obtained EMVCo and CC EAL 6+ hardware certification, software certification covers the OS and application layers, and ST secure pre-personalization services create a trusted supply chain.