Visa Europe is experimenting with finger vein-based payments, the company has announced.

Visa has teamed up with a UK-based biometrics startup called Sthaler to further develop finger vein recognition technology pioneered by Hitachi, and to use it for device- and card-free transactions. It works by connecting users’ finger vein patterns to assigned credit cards; when they scan their fingers at a payment terminal, the connected cards are charged. They call it the ‘FingoPay’ solution.

The company has also brought in Worldpay, a payments processing company, to trial the system in a real-world environment – in this case, a London restaurant owned by Worldpay.

The trial is ongoing, and Visa says it will report on the results as they unfold. But it is clearly optimistic, and in announcing the project on its Visa Europe Collab website the company highlighted the security benefits of finger vein technology, which it called “one of the most advanced biometrics alongside iris recognition,” adding that “finger veins cannot be scanned without the knowledge of the individual and cannot be left for duplication.”

The FingoPay project fits nicely alongside various other efforts on Visa’s part to explore advanced digital payment security solutions, particularly biometric technologies, and it should produce interesting results.

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November 13, 2015 – by Alex Perala