Manufacturing of Zwipe biometric payment cards for Middle East banks begins

Zwipe will jointly deliver Zwipe Pay ONE to banks across the Middle East with partner Inkript under a newly launched contactless biometric payment project announced by the companies.

Inkript has placed an order with Zwipe and begun manufacturing biometric payment cards based on the Zwipe Pay ONE platform, on a small scale, with the goal of launching pilots. Those pilots would be followed by mass-volume deployments by multiple banks in 2021, according to the plan.

The two companies formed a partnership last year to collaborate on the technical and commercial development of biometric payment cards.

“Since we announced our partnership with Zwipe, and as a result of the surge in contactless payments, our customers are increasingly demanding safer and more secure payment options; more so today with the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on people’s actions towards the nature of cash,” says Riad Itani, managing director at Inkript. “It is undoubtedly that security, convenience and contactless are the future of payments, and banks are ready to dive into new technologies that support consumers’ changing behaviors towards money, hygiene, comfort, and overall wellbeing.”

“Biometric payment cards powered by the Zwipe Pay ONE platform are the most compelling way to address this demand, in terms of both performance and cost,” Itani adds. “We are enthusiastic to take this next step with Zwipe.”

Zwipe also partnered with Middle East-based digital payments provider areeba this week to bring fingerprint-enabled cards made with its Zwipe Pay ONE platform to banks in the region, as well as North Africa.

“Inkript is a distinguished provider of smartcards and value-added services to some of the largest banks in the MEA. We are excited and proud that Inkript has selected Zwipe Pay ONE as its preferred biometric payment card platform and are now taking action together with us to provide secure payments solutions in the Middle East region,” says André Løvestam, CEO of Zwipe.

Zwipe announced last month that it has raised more than $10 million from company insiders and institutional investors to fuel the development and commercialization of its biometric technologies.

Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  fingerprint sensors  |  Middle East  |  Zwipe  |  Zwipe Pay