NatWest to Trial Biometric Bank Cards

NatWest is to begin trialling biometric payment cards to increase the security of contactless payments above £30. The cards were developed in partnership with Gemalto, Visa and Mastercard. They will be trialled for three months starting in April. Initially, the trial will involve about 200 customers, with various consumer profiles. Natwest, a subsidiary of RBS, is aiming to make the cards easy to use for the largest possible number of consumers, not just age-specific, tech-savvy users. The cards will allow customers to store and activate fingerprint verification by themselves. Once activated, the card will authorise contactless payments above 30 if the customer places a finger on the card corner where their biometric information is stored. Beyond the three-month trial, there is no official timeline for the full rollout of the cards. More: Societe Generale Experiments with Biometric Bank Cards  “We are using the very latest technology across our business to make banking easier for our customers and biometric fingerprint cards are one of the many technologies we are exploring further,” David Crawford, head of effortless payments at NatWest, said in a statement. “This is the biggest development in card technology in recent years and we are excited to trial the service,” Crawford added.