Colloquia

Summary

In our daily lives, people often need to be identified and verified by exclusive ownership of a token or authentication mechanisms, such as an ID card, a password or a PIN, in a wide variety of applications, including forensics, surveillance, international border crossing, banking, and defence. However, according to several authors, it is becoming increasingly noticeable that these authentication mechanisms are not sufficient for reliable identification of individuals as these rely on substitute depictions of one’s identity, which can be easily forgotten, lost, stolen, or shared.

Biometrics provides a more straightforward and reliable solution to the problem of user identification. As these biometric traits are inherent to the user, it provides a more significant challenge to alter, share, or forget them. Recently, the banking industry has been starting to develop solutions implementing biometrics like payment cards that implement a biometric system instead of conventional methods to authorize the transaction, such as the PIN, to offer a more convenient and secure solution. Moreover, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has originated an enormous influence on the acceleration of the adoption of biometrics due to people increasingly making online payments and trying to avoid touching shared items like Point of Service (POS) terminals or cash in physical locations.

Nonetheless, for a biometric system incorporated in a banking card to work correctly and authorize the payment, the user’s trait must be recognized accurately, since the performance of a biometric system depends on how good the quality of the acquired sample is and how similar the stored sample is to the user’s trait. Therefore, it is crucial that in the enrollment phase a correct sample acquisition from the user is performed and also feels comfortable during the process. Current pilot schemes and commercial rollouts of biometric smart cards lack a system that assists and guides the user properly during the initial fingerprint enrollment process on how to perform the enrollment adequately and informs about the progress status comfortably and intuitively.

Hence, this master thesis has investigated the implementation of a user-centred approach to develop a biometric smart card enrollment assistant solution that enhances the experience of use and aids the user during the process to ensure an accurate and functional initial trait enrollment. The final concept developed in this master thesis is a product that seeks to provide the user with a pleasurable first experience of interacting with a BSoC smart card so that the enrollment process is performed effortlessly and comfortably.