Bank Pocztowy's press office recently boasted that next month it will begin family and friends testing of Poland's first biometric payment card. The project is being carried out jointly with Mastercard, Fiserv Polska (formerly First Data Polska) and card manufacturer, Thales.

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According to Bank Pocztowy's press release, once the tests are completed in December, the biometric card will enter into the permanent offer addressed to institutional customers. It is possible, however, that in the further future individual customers of Bank Pocztowy will also be able to use the innovation.

According to the description sent, any payment made with the biometric card, regardless of the amount, will require biometric authorisation. To do this, simply place your thumb on the special sensor on the front of the card. If the fingerprint matches the pre-encoded biometric template, a green diode will light up and the transaction can be completed. The biometric template of the fingerprint will be stored only on the card, so it will not be retained in banking systems, POS terminals or ATMs.

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In Poland, the biometric card is a novelty, but in the world not quite. Tests have been conducted for a long time by several different banks, which you could also read about on the cashless.pl website. It seems to me that this innovation is being introduced to the market with a big delay. Currently, virtual payment cards, stored in digital wallets such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, are gaining popularity very quickly. In this case, a plastic card, which is at risk of being lost or having its data read by outsiders, is not needed at all.