Samsung to launch biometric mobile payment service within South Korea

Samsung SDS, the IT service affiliate of Samsung Group, has partnered with local payment gateway firms KG Mobilians and KG Inicis to launch a fingerprint mobile payment service within South Korea, with a global launch to follow in the near future, according to a report in ZD Net.

The electronics manufacturer has signed a memorandum of understanding with government-backed certificate licenser Korea Information Certificate Authority (KICA).

Samsung said it will launch other biometric authentication services in the coming months.

“Going forward, we plan to not only target hardware manufacturers that make smartphones, but to also provide our biometric solutions to online service and security companies,” said a Samsung SDS spokesperson. “We plan to offer clients that need biometrics solution with various business models and offer differentiated authentication services.”

Having received certification from the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance, Samsung will be able to expand its biometrics authentication business on an international level.

“We expected previous authentication technology such as passwords, certificates, and OTP will be replaced by FIDO-approved methods,” said the spokesman. “FIDO-backed biometric authentication will become the de facto standard of the future.”

Samsung is currently developing a global integrated certification center, which it will begin test running on its in-house intranet and then later expand it to Samsung affiliates and clients to enable all clients to deploy a unified certification platform.

Although Samsung SDS did not discuss specific details on how its biometrics solutions work, it did mention that it uses fingerprint, iris, and voice recognition technology for authentication.

Previously reported, Samsung is developing Biosignal ID for smartwatchs to process financial transactions.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  FIDO Ready  |  fingerprints  |  iris recognition  |  mobile payment  |  Samsung SDS  |  South Korea  |  voice recognition