Mastercard in talks with UK banks to trial fingerprint-scanning cards

Mastercard is exploring the possibility of trialling its fingerprint-scanning cards in the UK, as the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) tackles financial fraud head on.

The biometric cards are currently on trial in South Africa, and they combine chip technology with a fingerprint scanner on the card’s corner to verify the cardholder’s identity when making purchases in-store or online.

A Mastercard spokesperson said that it is in talks with all of its UK banking partners to see if those trials can expand to the UK soon, and while nothing is expected immediately, the card issuer said that “we’re ready for a pilot and we’d love one”.

Once PSD2 has been implemented, Mastercard predicted that one in four web sales will require two-factor identity authentication to complete a transaction, a huge increase over the current 2 per cent of transactions.

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