PayPal Fingerprint Log In Goes Live on Samsung S5
- Sunday, April 13th, 2014
- Share this article:
PayPal’s biometric fingerprint authentication method has gone live on the Samsung S5 in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Russia, the UK and and the US.
Users will now be able to log in to PayPal both on mobile and in partcipating stores to quickly pay without having to type in their password. As well as the S5, it also works with the Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Fit so users can make payments, redeem offers and receive notifications on their wrist.
“By working with Samsung to leverage fingerprint authentication technology on their new Samsung Galaxy S5, we are able to demonstrate to consumers don’t need to sacrifice convenience to increase security,” said Hill Ferguson, chief product officer at PayPal. “With a simple swipe of a finger, consumers can still securely log into their PayPal account to shop and pay with the convenience that mobile devices afford.”
The PayPal Wallet solution is cloud-based so no financial information is stored on the device. A unique encrypted key is shared during each fingerprint authentication, allowing PayPal to verify the identity of the customer but without storing biometric information on PayPal’s servers.
The partnership was first announced at Mobile World Congress in Febuary and is a product of the The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, the future payment standards body also backed by Google and Mastercard. But it looks like operators are already uncomfortable with letting PayPal so easily get in on the payments action, with Verizon apparently disabling this service, according to Droid Life.