SmartMetric to manufacture and distribute EMV SmartCards

SmartMetric Inc. announced today its plans to penetrate the EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) credit and debit payment SmartCard market.

According to a press release, EMV is an interoperability standard developed by the three financial institutions to ensure that their branded SmartCards and SmartCard POS terminals and ATMs work to achieve maximum security.

"World banks have rapidly migrated to the new EMV standard," SmartMetric CEO Colin Hendrick said. "International banks are issuing hybrid credit cards which support both magnetic stripe and chip transactions. The next imminent step will eliminate totally the magnetic stripe from the SmartCards."

Bank issued SmartCards still require security-vulnerable PIN codes or passwords. The SmartMetric biometric SmartCard will rely on fingerprint activation and will only work after the user's fingerprint has been read and approved.