A fingerprint-protected card being developed by Samsung and Mastercard

There’s a major revolution happening in the finance sector. As the prevalence of tap-to-pay becomes commonplace, banks and merchants are exploring innovations that’ll minimise physical interaction, while increasing security. Now, Samsung’s announced it’s working with Mastercard on a card that’s fitted with a biometric fingerprint scanner. 

And it looks like it’ll do… exactly what it sounds like. The concept card will be able to scan a user’s fingerprint to effectively ‘unlock’ it and give you access to the funds linked to that card. This will remove the need for a PIN, authentication on a smartphone or watch or authorisation through the banking app. 

No touchy touch with Samsung

It looks like Mastercard will still handle all the point-of-sale and clearing of funds, while the Korean tech company will implement its security features. At this point, it’s called ‘Samsung Card’, which will manage the financial backing at this stage, while the whole project is owned by Samsung Life Insurance, which launched in SA in July 2020.

Of course, this comes after Apple launched its own financial product: Apple Card. Of course, Apple Card isn’t available in South Africa (neither is Apple Pay, we need to lower our expectations). But if there’s one thing Apple Card doesn’t have, it’s an onboard fingerprint scanner. It’s just a precision CNC’d titanium, laser-etched card. Nothing fancy.

One thing we do have in SA, however, is Samsung Pay. The financial service currently supports most South African banks and run on the majority of Samsung devices in the country. 

The report mentions that Samsung Card will launch in South Korea later this year, with no indication of it launching anywhere else. 

Source: Engadget