Gemalto say their solution has been designed to conveniently and securely store transaction records inside the smart card to enable ‘microbanking’ and simplify access to financial services for India’s rural population.
Each FINO card can hold up to 15 different types of secure applications that facilitate financial services such as savings, loans and insurance.
The card acts as an electronic statement to log all transactions with the ability to store the last 150 transactions, with up to 10 transactions per service. Transactions are validated using biometric authentication, and end-user transaction is approved after fingerprint information is checked by low-cost readers.
“One of the biggest challenges in the microbanking industry is the huge amount of paperwork and human effort traditionally involved in supporting micro-transactions and credit-scoring potential customers”, said Manish Khera, FINO’s CEO. “High costs coupled with low returns did not make microfinance viable beyond a certain threshold, thus hampering growth,”
“This one-card-does-all solution resolves these barriers to growth by providing end-users with an easy-to-use and highly secure mode to conduct financial transactions, and for us to supervise transactions electronically.”
“Digital security is usually associated with developed markets,” added Dr Martin McCourt, President, South Asia, Gemalto. “This FINO deployment is a great example of how smart card technology can be used to bring banking services to the world’s unbanked, helping them to help themselves. We are proud at Gemalto to be part of this initiative that will effectively contribute towards developing poorer urban and rural areas in India.”
