Bring the card to the merchant’s payment terminal. Beep. It is paid. “Contactless payment is the major innovation of recent years, and the pandemic has accelerated its use since one in two proximity transactions now use it”, underlines Jean-Luc Pothet, General Secretary of Crédit Agricole Payment Services.
A real revolution in uses, ten years after the launch of the technology. But the story doesn’t end there, and banks continue to add new features to their cards. Latest innovation: the biometric card, capable of reading a fingerprint. It has been offered by BNP Paribas since November 2020 and must be marketed by certain regional Crédit Agricole banks by the end of the year.
“When it comes to innovation in payments, there is often a trade-off between security and ease of use for the customer. The biometric card is all right since it responds to both concerns ”, Mr Pothet continues. It is indeed equipped with a fingerprint reader, on which the customer places his thumb to authenticate his contactless purchase when he presents his card in front of the merchant’s payment terminal.
“There is a ‘wow’ effect! The fingerprint makes it possible to identify the customer, who can therefore pay contactlessly beyond the ceiling of 50 euros ”, details Jean-Marie Dragon, electronic payment and innovative payments manager at BNP Paribas. This establishment offers this service on the Visa Premier card, while Crédit Agricole offers it on the Gold and the World Elite Mastercard. Holders of traditional cards therefore do not have access to it for the time being.
Rarely free
“Biometrics is a technology that requires investment, but we are considering offering it also on our other cards depending on the evolution of production costs and volumes”, specifies Mr. Dragon, who believes that biometrics will become a market standard, like mobile payment. The two uses are indeed similar, paying with your smartphone also allows you to pay more than 50 euros without contact since the identification of the phone (code, fingerprint or facial recognition) guarantees that of the wearer.
Except that… “Mobile payment is free, unlike the card biometrics options”, says Maxime Chipoy, director of MoneyVox, a site specializing in money matters. The service is billed by BNP Paribas 24 euros per year, in addition to the Premier card fee. At Crédit Agricole, the rates (specific to each regional bank) were not yet available on October 6.
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