SmartMetric Welcomes the Death of the Magnetic Stripe on Credit and Debit Cards as Chip Based Cards Combined With Biometrics Take Hold

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): Mastercard has announced that by 2024 card issuers will no longer be required to use magnetic stripes on their credit and debit cards. “Based on the decline in payments powered by magnetic stripes after chip-based payments took hold, newly-issued Mastercard credit and debit cards will not be required to have a stripe starting in 2024 in most markets.”¹

Storing customer credit card information on a magnetic stripe creates another insecure touch point in the credit and debit card transaction data flow ecosystem when using a card to make a payment. Now that chip-based cards that store the card's number, expiration date and card users name amongst other things, the need to use highly vulnerable magnetic stripes has become a dinosaur legacy technology for today's high-tech credit and debit cards according to SmartMetric.

“Combining the secure chip used now on credit and debit cards with a biometric reader inside the card that is used to identify the card user in order to 'turn on the card' makes the next-generation credit card such as what we have created as an incredibly more secure card for use in the payments industry,” said today SmartMetric’s President and CEO, Chaya Hendrick.

“In fact, our new biometric technology inside the card not only replaces the need for magnetic stripes but replaces the highly vulnerable four-digit PIN that is still used today,” said Chaya Hendrick.

“Fingerprint biometrics and the secure payment chip along with the abandonment of insecure card features as the PIN and the magnetic stripe go to providing a massive hardening of the credit and debit card against the ever-menacing fraudsters according to SmartMetric.

SmartMetric’s Biometric card addresses the multibillion existing chip-based credit and debit card market. Figures published by EMVCo ² reveal that by year end of 2020, 10.8 billion EMV^® chip cards have been issued by financial institutions and were in global circulation – a massive increase of nearly 1 billion credit and debit EMV^® cards compared to the previous twelve months.

To view the SmartMetric Biometric Card please follow this link - Video of the SmartMetric Biometric Card. To view the company website: www.smartmetric.com

SOURCES:

¹ Goodbye magnetic stripe | Mastercard Newsroom

² 10 Billion and Counting: What the Latest EMV® Chip Data Means for Global Payments - EMVCo

EMV is a registered trademark of EMVCo

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