16 Dec Mastercard collaborates with Jordan Kuwait Bank for biometric security

Mastercard and Jordan Kuwait Bank have partnered together to introduce the first ever World Elite card – backed with biometric authentication – in the Middle East and Africa region.

The introduction will lead to seamless and secured contactless payments, which will enable the bank’s cardholders to use a registered fingerprint at any standard terminal point in place of the usual PIN.

The Mastercard Biometric Card has been designed using Mastercard’s cutting-edge technology and combines the use of chip technology with a unique fingerprint template on the card, to verify the owner’s identity.

The Jordan Kuwait Bank Biometric World Elite Mastercard will pave the way towards a global integration of biometric security standards in the world of banking. It will add an extra layer of security to help fight the growing levels of fraud, which have followed on from the surge in contactless payments.

Mastercard’s New Payments Index has already highlighted customers’ affinity to adopting biometric payments. It found that two thirds of people questioned already relied more on biometrics than PINs for payment verification purposes, while nearly half of those in the MENA region remained optimistic about the use of biometric verification in the future.