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

Crédit Agricole’s biometric card has a fingerprint sensor at one end that lets users make contactless transactions above the €50 (US$60.27) limit without needing to use their PIN —  although they will also have to use fingerprint verification for contactless payments under that limit for additional security, the bank says.

To activate the card for biometric verification, customers first register their fingerprint either at a Crédit Agricole branch or at home using an enrolment reader.

“The enrolment reader supplies the energy to the card to activate the chip in which the fingerprints are recorded, and explains the procedure for carrying out this recording (place your finger, lift it etc),” the bank says.

“Without the enrolment 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 thumbprint and your left thumbprint. However, if you wish, you can easily register the prints of other fingers.

Activation

Once they have recorded their fingerprints on the card, users then 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 biometric Mastercard Gold and Mastercard World Elite cards can also be used like a traditional bank card to make chip-and-PIN payments and at ATMs, as well as for online purchases.

Users can additionally upload their card to a Paylib or Samsung Pay mobile wallet, with support for Apple Pay due “in the future”.

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

Crédit Agricole announced it was to begin piloting biometric banks cards in June 2019.

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