Zwipe books biometric payment card deal worth more than last two years’ revenue

Zwipe has booked a $1.9 million deal to supply its Zwipe Pay ONE biometric payment card technology to Beautiful Card Corporation (BCC), which produces 20 million EMV cards a year out of Taiwan.

The deal represents a dramatic revenue boost for a company that booked only slightly over $400,000 in revenues in 2019 and 2020 combined. Dramatic as it is, the boost is far from unexpected, as Zwipe has been touting its prospects and signing up partners with zeal over the past couple of years in anticipation of mass adoption of biometric payment cards with fingerprint sensors.

Zwipe and BCC originally partnered up in May, which was followed by an extensive evaluation of Zwipe Pay ONE.

“Driven by the rapidly growing sales pipeline of new opportunities identified for NextGen Payment Cards, BCC wishes to ensure production capacity and placing this order to Zwipe is part of that commitment to our customers,” comments Peggy Wu, CEO and Chairman of BCC. “We are working on bringing a disruptive new product to market and are excited by the opportunities that this will create.”

BCC is the largest scratch card manufacturer in Taiwan, the second largest in Asia, and 7th in the world, according to the announcement.

“We are delighted and grateful that BCC has made this commitment to Zwipe and Zwipe Pay ONE. The partnership with BCC has been exceptional and we continue to work closely in advancing both technical and commercial activities,” adds André Løvestam, CEO of Zwipe. “BCC’s investment of human and financial resources to manufacture the Zwipe Pay ONE product has demonstrated their ability to bring an outstanding product to market at scale. We look forward to be working even closer with BCC through certification and volume ramp-up.”

New TrustedBio product revealed by Idex Biometrics

Idex Biometrics has launched the TrustedBio Max to reduce the computational requirements on the secure element within biometric payment cards. This allows card designers to integrate less costly common SEs, and also minimize software development and reduce manufacturing complexity, according to the company announcement.

The latest addition to the TrustedBio line completes biometric processing in 250 milliseconds with power efficiency exceeding EMV specifications. It utilizes an Arm Cortex-M3 32-bit processor running at up to 200 MHz, and proprietary dedicated hardware to optimize authentication and anti-spoofing algorithms.

“This new addition delivers unsurpassed performance, while pushing the boundaries of lower card development and manufacturing costs,” says Idex Biometrics CEO Vince Graziani. “TrustedBio Max is intended to be highly complementary to today’s most popular, low-cost SEs, allowing for rapid card design by the broadest range of smart card manufacturers. The TrustedBio product family allows us to offer a range of solutions that align with the system architecture strategies of all our customers, from global integrators who may have proprietary, high performance SEs, to regional card manufacturers seeking to participate in the promising market for biometrically-enabled smart cards. Our ability to offer a range of solutions is uniquely enabled by our engineering expertise in hardware, software, algorithms, and system design.”

TrustedBio Max samples are now available, with mass production planned for the third quarter of 2021.

Card use still strong

The market appears to be ripe for biometric payment cards, with physical cards still the preferred method of payment among all generations surveyed for a report issued by PYMNTS and Idemia. The number of people comfortable with using physical cards for in-store payments is more than 10 percent higher than the number of those comfortable with digital wallets or banking apps among ‘Generation Z,’ and the spread increases with the age of the respondents.

The 14-page report on ‘Digital Card Usage: A Path Forward’ shows payments from digital wallets and apps is increased, but still frequently associated with a card, as 41 percent of U.S. consumers have a credit or debit card registered to their digital wallets. The report delves into the frequency of card use in different environments and among different age groups.

Article Topics

authentication  |  biometric cards  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint sensors  |  IDEMIA  |  Idex Biometrics  |  secure element  |  Zwipe  |  Zwipe Pay