deal with mastercard !!!!!, page-6

It's strange that BQT haven't mentioned (any where)who they have been working with ? That must be the worlds best kept secret.

It looks like "Indenticator Inc" have their foot in the door with fingerprints.

http://www.banking.com/aba/cover_0197.htm

Mastercard, meanwhile, has been testing biometrics at its corporate headquarters in Purchase, N.Y. Since July 1996, visitors have had the option of finger-based check-in. The firm, which typically receives 25,000 guests a year, also is conducting research on consumers' attitudes toward biometrics.

Mastercard is not proposing to store images of individuals fingerprints (in fact, its promotional literature emphasizes, "we will not have a database of fingerprints anywhere.") Instead, it is testing finger minutiae, an approach whereby the details of someone's finger are expressed as a algorithm.

The technology vendor is San Bruno, Calif.-based Indenticator Inc. Oscar Pieper, company president, told ABA BJ, "we have been working with Mastercard for about a year-and-a-half now."

Joel Lisker, senior vice-president of security and risk management with Mastercard, has said the so-called smart credit card, incorporating finger verification, could eliminate 80% of fraudulent charges. (Purchases where the cardholder is not present would remain at risk.) For the system to work, point-of-sale outlets would need a special, finger-scanning pad, which probably would cost just $20.

Ben Miller asserts, "credit cards are considered the biggest potential application of biometrics on the consumer side, especially as cards get more sophisticated. Future smart cards will carry more value and more sensitive information."

As for facial recognition, at least two suppliers, Siemens Nixdorf, Paderborn, Germany, and Miros, Inc., Wellesley, Mass., displayed this technology at the Bank Administration Institute's Retail Delivery Conference in December. The Miros system is being installed at the Pentagon to secure the computer network there. The system could also be used for ATM access. Although the research mentioned earlier indicated people were less concerned now with the "Big Brother" aspects of biometric security, a Miros spokesman pointed out that facial recognition is nonintrusive. At an ATM, the process would begin when a person inserted her ATM card and would take about two seconds, without any customer involvement.