Paying with your fingerprint is now possible in France. This article addresses what businesses need to know about biometric bank cards—payment and debit cards that allow you to validate transactions using your finger. What are the benefits of biometric bank cards? How do they work? This article addresses the most common questions about biometric bank cards.

What’s in this article?

• What is a biometric bank card?
  
• How does a user activate a biometric bank card?
  
• How does a biometric bank card work?
  
• What’s the difference between a biometric bank card and a traditional bank card?
  
• How do biometric bank cards impact businesses?
  
• Biometric bank card benefits
  
• Biometric bank card disadvantages
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What is a biometric bank card?

A biometric bank card is a payment and withdrawal card that allows the holder to authorize transactions using their fingerprint. This type of card has a small fingerprint sensor that identifies card owners and authenticates transactions. With biometric recognition, the user is not required to enter their PIN to make a contactless payment. This creates a frictionless payment process for both the buyer and the seller, while simultaneously reducing the risk of bank card fraud.

How does a user activate a biometric bank card?

To make a contactless payment with a biometric bank card, the cardholder must first register their fingerprints on the card. Depending on the bank, the registration process might take place at a branch with an advisor or at a customer’s home.

A biometric bank card is activated upon its first use for a withdrawal or payment requiring a PIN. The user can then make payments using their fingerprint.

How does a biometric bank card work?

Biometric bank cards function through the use of an integrated fingerprint sensor. The sensor is powered either by an internal battery or by power from a business’s electronic payment terminal (EPT).

To make a purchase, a customer must place a finger on their card’s fingerprint sensor before approaching the EPT. To authorize payment, the customer then holds the card a few centimeters from the EPT. The registered fingerprint is compared to that of the cardholder. If the fingerprints match, payment is accepted, regardless of the amount. If not, the transaction is rejected.

Biometric bank cards eliminate the need to enter a PIN on the EPT keypad to validate purchases over €50. However, the customer can still enter their PIN if they so wish. In the event that the fingerprint sensor doesn’t work, the customer can instead use their PIN.

Note that a customer’s biometric data never leaves the fingerprint-enabled card. It’s securely stored on the card’s chip. The bank does not retain any biometric data, and the business does not have access to it. Securing personal data in this way is an example of card vaulting.

What’s the difference between a biometric bank card and a traditional bank card?

A biometric card has the same size, shape, and format as a traditional bank card. Like a traditional bank card, a biometric card is also linked to a checking account and can be used for withdrawals, contactless payments, and in-person payments. A biometric bank card, therefore, retains all the features and benefits of a traditional card.

However, a biometric card has a fingerprint sensor—a component that the standard card lacks. The method for validating payments therefore differs between the two cards: the fingerprint-enabled bank card relies on biometric authentication, whereas the standard bank card requires the entry of a PIN to authorize contactless payments exceeding €50.

The main advantage of the biometric system of authentication is that fingerprints are much more difficult to copy than a four-digit code. A biometric bank card offers a more secure and intuitive payment experience than a traditional card.

The biometric card also removes the contactless payment limit (currently set at €50 for security reasons). With this type of card, all contactless payments are authenticated using a fingerprint. The only payment limit you need to follow is the card limit, as specified in the contract.

How do biometric bank cards impact businesses?

The arrival of biometric bank cards on the market has been positive for businesses. Authentication using fingerprints is faster and more secure, reducing wait times at the register. Businesses do not possess or manage biometric data.

Furthermore, if a business’s EPT is equipped to accept contactless payments, no change is required—biometric bank cards are compatible with most terminals currently being used by French businesses.

Biometric bank card benefits

Biometric bank cards are an innovative technology with several advantages:

• Modernized customer experience and sales process
  
• Accelerated payment process—customers no longer need to enter their PIN
  
• Ability to process larger transaction amounts (thanks to the removal of the contactless payment limit)
  
• Easy deployment—most contactless EPTs are already compatible with biometric cards
  
• Tighter security—biometric authentication is more secure than PINs
  
• Reduced risk of bank card fraud—fingerprints are difficult to hack
  
• More hygienic payment process—customer expectations in this area have evolved, especially since the pandemic
  
• Option to use traditional bank card functionality—PIN entry remains available to validate payments, which can be useful in the event of a fingerprint sensor malfunction or a finger injury
  

Biometric bank card disadvantages

This type of bank card also has some inconveniences.

Accessibility

Currently, the only banks offering customers biometric bank cards are BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole. Société Générale is still developing its biometric bank card. In addition, biometric payments are only available for high-end and midrange cards. The majority of bank cardholders in France do not yet have access to biometric features.

Additional cost

Biometric functionality is a paid feature. The cost is added to a bank card’s annual fee. For example, BNP Paribas charges customers €24 per year in addition to the standard annual fee.

Adoption

Despite their many advantages, customer adoption of biometric bank cards remains low in France. Biometric cards face direct competition from mobile payments, which also allow for transaction authentication via facial recognition or fingerprint scanning.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.
  
• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.
  
• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.
  
• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.
  
• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.
  

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.