Motiv ring to provide biometric payments later this year

Jan 9, 2019, 12:25 pm EST | Chris Burt

Smart ring Motiv plans to launch heart rate biometrics for payment authentication later in 2019, according to a company announcement at CES reported by The Verge. A software update in the second half of the year will enable the wearable to communicate with point-of-sale terminals to authorize payments.

When it launched a new version in October, Motiv extended the ring’s functionality to support two-factor and biometric authentication with gesture recognition in compliance with the FIDO2 and WebAuthn protocols for password-free logins to online accounts. The software update will leverage the built-in EKG monitoring capability originally meant for exercise and fitness-tracking purposes to provide biometric verification for payments.

The company also began offering WalkID gait biometrics as a continuous, passive authentication method in beta last year.

Tappy showed off its biometric wearable payment technology at Money20/20 China in November. Trials of biometric payment cards, meanwhile, continue to be launched around the world, with the most recent one by big Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo being announced by Gemalto in December.