Intesa Sanpaolo is the latest to try its hand at fingerprint cards in a collaboration with Gemalto and Nordic startup Zwipe.
The four-month trial in Turin, Milan and Rome, will see the bank issue Mastercards with an embedded low-power consumption fingerprint sensor from biometric outfit Fingerprints.
Biometric data is collected in the branch and customers need only press their thumb on the card to effect a contactless payment at the point-of-sale. The cards work with all currently installed eftpos terminals and will enable the bank to raise limits above the current ceiling applied to regular tap-and-pay payments.
Intesa San Paolo is following in the footsteps of Societe generale, which last month announced a similar trial using technology from Idemia.
Bank of Cyprus also tried out the Gemalto-issued card back in 2018, while Norway's Sparebanken DIN was the first in Europe to run live tests of the technology in collaboration with Mastercard and Zwipe way back in 2014.