An account at the end of each finger: OVE Touch & Go biometrics sidestep payment cards

Assign a bank account or payment card to each fingertip to then pay in person with a just a fingerprint scan – no card, wallet or smartphone – with OVE Touch & Go hardware channeling Green Payments processing. Just try not to forget which finger is which card, or to wash your hands afterwards, proponents of contactless biometric payment cards would no doubt warn you.

Launching as a concept in the Bay Area this November, the OVE system for payments is aiming to persuade consumers that fingerprints are the future. Their work will be to convince consumers who will doubtless have at least a smartphone on them at all times – especially in the Bay Area – that undergoing biometric verification with a store’s OVE hardware is preferable to doing so on their own devices. And to go somewhere for biometrics capture.

OVE still requires owning a smartphone as users assign cards to their fingerprints via an app. Onboarding is carried out with face biometrics compared to a government-issued ID by partner Jumio, as described on the company’s website and privacy policy.

The app also collects electronic store receipts. To initially register fingerprints, new users must assign them to their fingertips within the app then use it to locate the nearest venue with an OVE scanner in use to have their fingerprints scanned. Tokenization means biometrics themselves are not collected or stored.

Much of the website is devoted to explaining how secure the system is and how fingerprints are preferable to, say, face biometrics, with OVE finds “inFaceive.”

“When Apple introduced the iPhone they automatically presented a new technological way to use fingerprints to unlock devices,” wrote OVE Touch & Go CEO, Caio Buchalla, in a blog post.

“This innovation forced the world to feel comfortable and accept fingerprint technology. But later Apple replaced fingerprints with Face ID, and without knowing it Apple gave the idea that fingerprint technology was outdated. But the truth is, it was not executed correctly in the marketplace until now.”

The firm’s digital payment system is powered by fintech firm Plaid. A release states the OVE Sensors – the in-store hardware – to be equipped with “patented sensors.” The site states fingerprints cannot be stolen, which many in the spoofing arms race may disagree with.

Green Payments CEO and OVE Advisor Cliff Green told Biometric Update in an email that OVE holds the patent on the biometric sensors, writing: “They designed and manufactured the fingerprint sensors themselves.”

“OVE Sensors are built with advanced fingerprint technology, which utilizes acoustics (sonic waves) to scan the pores of a user’s finger for a deeply accurate image,” wrote CMO Daniel Cafiero in a June 2022 blog.

“OVE doesn’t capture and store images of your fingerprints, our technology creates dual encrypted hashes that represent each finger, which cannot be stolen or repurposed by malign actors.”

The OVE Sensors hardware will be offered to Green Payments merchants as part of the POS package from January 2023.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint readers  |  OVE Touch & Go  |  POS