Biometric card in Bank Pocztowy. Payment is authorized with a fingerprint

In November this year. Bank Pocztowy will start testing the solution within the Friends phase&Family, and already in December, in cooperation with Fiserv Polska S.A. and Thales will introduce a biometric Mastercard in its offer. Thus Bank Pocztowy will become the first institution in Poland, and one of the first in Europe, to provide its customers with this innovative solution. The Bank’s Board of Executives emphasizes that the implementation of the biometric card in the offer is another activity which is part of Bank Pocztowy’s strategy of development of digital solutions which will further increase security of non-cash transactions in Poland. Institutional customers will be the first to benefit from the solution.

Bank Pocztowy, as the first institution in Poland and one of the first in Europe, will provide its institutional customers with a possibility to make non-cash transactions with the use of biometric authentication. Making payments, including low-value ones, will be possible only after verification of the cardholder’s fingerprint. Already in November, Bank Pocztowy will launch Friends&Family will start testing the biometric card.

So far, customers of one of the French financial institutions in Europe could use such a possibility. The cards and readers needed for encoding the biometric fingerprint pattern will be provided by Thales, the author of this innovative product. The first pilot biometric card of the Bank Pocztowy will be issued already at the end of October this year., and the solution will be introduced to the offer already in December. The card will be available for institutional clients.

– Biometric cards are a complete novelty not only in Poland but also worldwide. Thales, the company that developed this advanced technology, only supplies its product to five markets, including one in Europe. Now, thanks to our cooperation with Mastercard, this modern solution, so far known only from sci-fi movies, will also be available to our customers, who will be able to make transactions in an even more convenient and secure way. This is also another stage in the implementation of our development strategy – increasing digitalization of our solutions offered to customers. I also hope that the introduction of the biometric card will contribute to the dynamic development of the cashless payment market in Poland – comments Marcin Ledworowski, Member of the Management Board of Bank Pocztowy responsible for Business and IT.

– We are happy that thanks to Bank Pocztowy’s innovative approach to the development of payment services, Poland is one of the first countries in Europe to provide customers with a biometric card. Commercial customers of Bank Pocztowy will be able to test such benefits of this technology as its high security level and convenience. Poles are very open to innovations, which was already visible in the implementation of contactless payments, and later mobile payments. That is why we think that this is the best place to check whether such innovative products as biometric cards have a chance to be accepted and gain popularity – says Tomasz Owczarek, Sales and Strategy Director at the Polish branch of Mastercard Europe.

We are pleased to work with our long trusted partner, Bank Pocztowy, on issuing the first biometric card in Poland. The inclusion of this product in the bank’s offer is another step in the development of the Polish payment market. Especially in the context of raising the security level of payment card transactions. We are happy to be part of this payment revolution. I hope that the solution will meet with a keen interest of those bank customers who want to pay faster, easier and safer. Let me add that this is not the end of the innovative projects we have in our plans together. We do not slow down and in parallel we are working on online virtual card service for bank customers – says Krzysztof Polończyk, CEO of Fiserv Polska S.A.

Bank Pocztowy’s biometric card will enable customers to make modern, convenient and safe cashless payments. Each contactless transaction, regardless of the amount, will require biometric authentication. Before the payment can be made it will be necessary to put the thumb to the special sensor on the front of the card, which will read the fingerprint. If the fingerprint matches the pre-encoded biometric template, a green light will be activated.

Once the biometric fingerprint pattern has been stored, no one other than the legitimate cardholder will be able to complete the transaction. Importantly, the encrypted biometric pattern of the fingerprint will be stored only on the payment card. The data will not be stored in the reader, in the bank’s systems, or sent to a POS terminal or ATM during payment processing.