Brad,
I reread the article and you are right, Mastercard was testing Indenticators hardware in a time and attendance application. However, it implied the ultimate use was plastic cards. If there is any doubt about that article did you read the other one from Business Week. It is crystal clear. Here's an excerpt:
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Developments to Watch
Let Your Finger Do The Charging
Credit-Card Companies lost about $1.3 billion last year as a result of fraud, according to estimates by MasterCard International Inc. But the Purchase (N.Y.) company in June will begin testing a "smart card" that could eliminate 80% of bogus charges, says Joel S. Lisker, MasterCard's senior vice-president for security. Only mail and phone orders would remain vulnerable.
The idea is to store information about a person's fingerprint in a chip embedded in the plastic. The data would be a long, encrypted number describing selected features, such as the location of the ends of certain fingerprint ridges. MasterCard evaluated other so-called biometric techniques, including voice prints, but decided to go with the "finger minutiae" approach by Identicator Technology Corp. in San Bruno, California.
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The press release you referenced was dated about the same time as these news stories. I might accept that one of them got Indenticator confused with Identix, but not two different publications. The other story was from USA Today.
One thing for sure, at that time either Identicator or Identix was stretching the truth about how tight they were with MasterCard.
Dennis |
