SmartMetric successfully won a legal fee dispute with Visa and MasterCard, which would have cost the company $3 million in fees and court costs. The case dealt with the biometric technology the two credit card giants claimed acted as patent infringement.
The court determined there was not enough evidence against SmartMetric to merit a ruling in Visa and MasterCard's favor. The claim against SmartMetric was denied, allowing the company to move on with their latest ID verification platform.
"This is great news for SmartMetric, freeing us now to move forward with our advanced biometric payment and identity card technology without this massive potential cost to the company over our heads," said Chaya Hendrick, President and CEO of SmartMetric. "This threat over the company of having to pay $3 million has been a serious impediment to our moving forward into production."
Biometric technology is making a big splash in the financial world, with the possibility of fingerprints, eye scanning, and even heartbeat identification to be used as proof of someone's identity at the register. While this technology is still years away from being universally employed, a case like this could open the door for other providers to innovate and change the way we verify credit cards in the future.