Crédit Agricole customers can now use their fingerprint to authenticate contactless payments made with a deferred debit biometric card issued by the French bank.

Agricultural credit biometric card has a fingerprint sensor on one end that allows users to conduct contactless transactions above the € 50 ($ 60.27) limit without having to use their PIN – although they Will also need to use fingerprint verification for contactless payments below that limit for added security, the bank said.

To activate the card for biometric verification purposes, the customer first registers his fingerprint either at a Crédit Agricole branch or at home using an enrollment reader.

“The enrollment reader supplies the energy to the card to activate the chip in which the fingerprints are registered, and explains the procedure to follow to carry out this registration (place your finger, lift it, etc.)”, specifies the bank.

“Without the enrollment reader, you cannot register your fingerprints and the biometric card cannot be used in contactless mode.

“You can register a maximum of two fingerprints. We recommend that you register your right fingerprint and your left fingerprint. However, if you want, you can easily register other fingerprints.

Activation

Once they register their fingerprints on the card, users activate it for contactless payments by visiting or making a phone call to the bank to confirm registration.

They can then use it for contactless payments by placing their finger on the fingerprint sensor when presenting the card at a payment terminal.

Crédit Agricole’s Mastercard Gold and Mastercard World Elite biometric cards can also be used like a traditional bank card to make payments by chip and PIN and at ATMs, as well as for online purchases.

In addition, users can download their card to a Paylib or Samsung Pay mobile wallet, with support for Apple Pay “in the future”.

A short video in french explains how customers register and activate the biometric card.

Crédit Agricole has announced that it will start piloting biometric bank cards in June 2019.

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