Italian firm Card Tech’s fingerprint smart card ready for mass production

Italian biometric technology firm Card Tech announced that its new biometric smart card, which features IDEX’s fingerprint swipe sensor, is ready for mass production.

Card Tech said its R&D team spent years on the industrial engineering phase of the Smart Card project, which was partially funded by a 4 million euro investment.

The patented ISO-compliant system-on-card solution uses IDEX’s flexible swipe sensor, based on its patented two-part SmartFinger technology which can be easily integrated into cards.

Since the sensor is separated from the silicon itself, IDEX has enabled Card Tech and its tier one manufacturing partner to mass produce the biometric system-on-card with integrated fingerprint sensor.

While most silicon die based sensors are more likely to break. IDEX’s polymer fingerprint sensor enables the required bending resistance specified in ISO 7810.

Since 2011, Card Tech and IDEX have been partnering together to offer biometric cards enabled by IDEX Smartfinger miniature sensors and IDEX biometric algorithms, which were developed over the last five years.

“Design, prototyping and industrialisation have required a major effort: analyses, research, testing, changes and developments, year after year, prototype after prototype,” said Fabrizio Borracci, chairman of Card Tech. “Now, in addition to ensuring the perfect functioning of an innovative device in every aspect, we also guarantee efficient mass reproduction. It has been a challenge that we can claim to have met.”

Smart Card by Card Tech integrates an advanced capacitive biometric sensor and has inside a biometric algorithm on a separate micro-controller that enables it to quickly reconstruct an image and compare it with the user’s fingerprint.

It features a “match-on-card” biometric controller for full security and privacy, which enables it to verify the user’s biometric data inside the device without checking with a third-party database or reader.

In compliance with the current ISO 7810 ID-1 standards, the biometric card can be read by all smart card readers on the market.

The biometric data of the card owner is a simplification of the user’s actual fingerprint which cannot be traced back to the individual. As an additional security feature, the data is stored in an encrypted memory inside the card, making it resistant to physical and logical attacks.

Smart Card by Card Tech can be used in a range of sectors, including banking, finance, government, institutions and companies, or for personal identification applied to public administration.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Card Tech  |  fingerprint sensors  |  Idex Biometrics  |  Italy  |  smartcards