Danal, CrucialTec launch mobile fingerprint payment app in Korea

It’s been widely speculated that Apple is waiting to see how Android phones are received with open sensors which communicate to third-party apps before it opens the fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 5S, and it looks like a South Korean payment service and CrucialTec may be one of the first major test-cases for the tech giant to watch.

Reported in the Korea Herald, mobile payment service provider Danal, in partnership with CrucialTec have launched a mobile fingerprint payment app – called BarTong — and the first phone to integrate this system is the Pantech VEGA LTE-A.

Reported previously, the Pantech VEGA LTE-A smartphone includes a Fingerprint Cards sensor and is the company’s flagship model.

According to the report in the Herald, Danal plans to eventually launch the BarTong service in overseas markets, including the U.S and China.

Also reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, CrucialTec, which sits on the FIDO Alliance Board of Directors, signed a three-year supply agreement with Fingerprint Cards to integrate its sensors into its optical track pad.

Also, early this year, CrucialTec placed an initial order of 100,000 swipe sensors from Fingerprint Cards for a pilot test of a line of mobile phones in Asia.

The Biometrics Research Group recently published a research note that argues mobile commerce adoption will accelerate due to impending wide-scale integration of biometric technology into smartphones – such as in the Pantech and the iPhone 5S. Specifically, the group anticipates that mobile payment transactions will reach $250 billion in 2014, reaching $750 billion in annual transactions with more than 700 million users by 2020.

Article Topics

biometric payments  |  CrucialTec  |  Danal  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  mobile  |  Pantech  |  smartphone