Biometric payment card enrollment interoperability spec developed by SPA

Initial interoperability specifications for biometric card enrollment have been formulated by the Smart Payment Association, and refined with industry feedback.

The SPA’s Biometric Card Working Group made a first draft of the specifications available through the Association’s Standardization Working Group earlier this year. The latest update from the SPA says it has worked with its Advisory Council to incorporate feedback into the specs.

“This significant achievement represents a major step to foster smooth adoption and usage of biometric cards by issuers and end-users in a standardized, streamlined and systematic way,” SPA President Andreas Strobel wrote in the group’s latest newsletter. “SPA is now working on a strategy to promote these specifications within the payments industry — either as a proprietary SPA implementation specification or through submission to relevant standards bodies, such as EMVCo and ISO.”

On-card enrollment for biometric payment cards has long been considered one of the principal barriers to mainstream adoption of the technology. The lack of standards for biometric enrollment to payment cards was bemoaned by Linxens VP Thomas Decker back in 2022.

The prospects for mainstream adoption have faded significantly over the last several years.

Goode Intelligence recently revised its forecast for biometric payment card adoption over the next five years, reducing the number predicted to be in circulation to 54 million.

Biometric payment cards were anticipated by many observers, including the SPA, to be advancing towards mainstream adoption following the COVID-19 pandemic. But the rise of digital wallets like the EUDI Wallet, for which SPA and the Secure identity Alliance are collaborating to write a paper on its potential for payments, and dedicated POS devices for biometric payments from the likes of J.P. Morgan, Visa and Amazon may have mostly left physical card payments behind.

Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  Smart Payment Association