Will PIN codes for cards in France gradually disappear?

Bank card payment approval is going biometric in France, with new fingerprint-recognition technology replacing the need for PIN codes.

A number of banks including BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole already offer such options, whereby fingerprint recognition (or more accurately in most cases, thumbprint) is used to approve contactless payments.

BNP Paribas is currently offering this option with its Visa Premier card (costing €134 per year), with an additional annual surcharge of €24. At present it is marketed primarily to frequent travellers and self-employed people, though it is expected to become more widespread in future, reports tech specialist site Les Numériques.

Similarly, in November 2024 Mastercard revealed its ‘Vision 2030’ plan to use fingerprint technology to replace the current system for online payments, which requires users to enter the 16-digit card number and one-time SMS code (one-time passcode).

It comes after France’s June 2024 introduction of the ‘Sans Contact Plus’ system, which saw the contactless payment limit lifted – but did not quite make the jump to PIN-free payments entirely. For purchases above €50, users can now tap (rather than insert) their contactless card at the payment terminal, but they must still enter their PIN manually to complete the transaction.

Biometric approval bypasses this entirely, removing the €50 cap or the need for a PIN. It also works without the need for merchants to update or change their payment terminals. The data remains private and is not seen or stored by the merchant.

New technology

Changes in card manufacturing technology have facilitated this step forward, and now enable a fingerprint sensor and antenna to be embedded in a card. An active capacitive sensor pulls power from the terminal’s electromagnetic field in a few milliseconds, removing the need for a separate battery.

Cards that enable biometric approval used to cost the issuer €15-20 in 2020, but developments in manufacturing have now reduced this to less than €5 per card, making it more viable for banks to introduce the system to more (if not all) clients.

A further issue that has recently been resolved is how to record the user’s fingerprint in the first instance.

Some banks are offering clients the option to do this in-branch, while others – including Crédit Agricole – are sending kits to users by post, allowing them to both complete the process and recycle the plastic at home. 

So far, this system is being rolled out gradually, following a successful trial period in Lorraine, Champagne-Bourgogne, and Indre-et-Loire, for customers with Mastercard Gold and World Elite cards.

However, critics say the solutions are impractical and wasteful, as they require kits to be sent by post – adding delays and extra steps to the card’s set-up – while also generating unnecessary plastic waste.

Instead, trials of another method of fingerprint registration, dubbed F.CODE, sees users place their new card against the back of their phone. 

This generates an electromagnetic field strong enough to power the card’s chip, and the remaining steps are completed via an app. The process is similar to setting up fingerprint or facial recognition on mobile phones with which many are already familiar. 

Anti-fraud cards

As the new technology is rolled out further, physical cards will gradually contain less and less readable or sensitive information. Mastercard already calls such cards ‘Numberless’.

Many new credit cards, including those issued by Société Générale and BNP Paribas in France, already have the card number, expiry date, and security code on the back of the card in small print only. Some cards do not even show this. 

This makes cards less valuable to fraudsters or thieves – eventually a lost or stolen card will be unusable without the owner’s biometric details, and contain no useful information on or within it.

The ‘fingerprint’ system enables banks to retain the usefulness of plastic physical cards, rather than them becoming entirely digital as with systems such as smartphone-only Apple Pay. It also allows them to benefit from the security advantages of fingerprint recognition while avoiding confusion for users already familiar with such systems.

Similarly, users will retain the option to key in their PIN in the event that they cannot use their finger or thumb (eg. they have had an accident and their hand is in plaster, etc).