NEXT Biometrics Shipping First Samples of Advanced Smart Card Module to Customers

NEXT Biometrics (Oslo Bors: NEXT), a global leader in fingerprint sensor technology, today announced the company has shipped the first samples of its biometric module for smart cards to select customers. The modules are another key element of NEXT’s strategy for bringing its unique large-area fingerprint sensor technology to the smart card market.

NEXT has been working closely with seven top customers in Asia, Europe and North America demonstrating its smart card solution and has now moved on to provide them with sample products. Additionally, the company is engaged with another 20 customers for the smart card module worldwide.

“Shipping samples of our biometric module for smart cards marks another step forward for NEXT in this rapidly growing market segment and highlights the strong support among customers for our fingerprint sensor technology,” said Ritu Favre, NEXT CEO. “I’m very pleased with the strong interest we’re seeing among customers for our innovative smart card solutions, as well as the solid momentum we’re building internally with the execution delivered by our engineering teams. These two things combined are the foundation for NEXT’s long-term success.”

The fully flexible sensor NEXT has shipped to customers is compliant with ISO/IEC 17839, which defines the functional architecture and key characteristics for biometric smart cards. The module is designed for contact-based (Class B) smart cards and is ideally suited for government identification cards, financial inclusion programs and access control devices.

The module eases integration into finished products, connecting directly to a smart card chip as a card-internal peripheral. NEXT’s unique large-area sensor enables one-touch self-enrollment capability and export of standards-based finger minutiae templates. In addition, NEXT fingerprint sensors deliver a proven, secure and convenient user experience with outstanding false rejection rate (FRR) and false acceptance rate (FAR) performance.

Today’s news follows the company’s announcement of 25 April that it had achieved an important first step toward commercialization of its fingerprint sensor technology for contactless smart cards.