Biometric Credit Card Creator SmartMetric Looks for Share of $8.4T US Credit Card Market

SmartMetric, a U.S. company working on biometric credit cards, reported the value of commercial cards issued in the U.S. hit $8.46 trillion in 2021, a 25.1% increase, a press release said.

SmartMetric’s services allow the cardholder to touch a sensor on the card’s surface, and in less than a second, their fingerprint is scanned and matched with the prestored fingerprint in the card.

The release noted that security is important to the company, with the fingerprint data leaving the card “at no point.”

“SmartMetric is the only known fingerprint biometric activated card in the credit card industry with a rechargeable battery that allows the card to be used in all card transaction situations, such as ATM’s and restaurants that process the card transaction away from the table,” said SmartMetric’s president and CEO, Chaya Hendrick.

Read more: Inside The Fight For Digital Driver’s Licenses

PYMNTS wrote that there are more and more examples of biometric identity verification solutions coming out.

The report says this has come from their use with things like smartphones and fitness wearables, with around 800 million facial recognition-equipped mobile devices estimated to be around by 2024, a report from 2020 said.

And several U.S. states have been looking into adopting digital identity for driver’s licenses, due to the advantages of biometric devices. But there were concerns such as incompatibility across state lines that have posed problems.

A PYMNTS Digital Identity Tracker explored the latest developments in digital IDs, which at that time,  included digital driver’s license initiatives and biometric credit card solutions, along with the increasing fake profiles on social media.

Biometrics have become popular with credit card users, with a Visa study finding that two-thirds of surveyed customers preferred biometric authentication over passwords, due to issues like security and ease of use.