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New Samsung flagship S5 phone's fingerprint scanner lets you check out with PayPal

Going beyond Apple's biometric scanner, Samsung says its fingerprint technology can also be used to verify online payments.
Written by Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer

 

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Could biometric technology, despite doubts about its accuracy and reliability, be used to authorize online payments?

Announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Samsung's latest flagship smartphone, the S5, sports a 5.1-inch high-definition 1080p display, a Snapdragon 800 2.5GHz quad-core processor, and a 16-megapixel camera. However, there's more to this gadget, in the form of a fingerprint scanner integrated within the home button.

The South Korean firm and electronic payments provider PayPal announced on Monday that the Galaxy S5 will be able to process password-free purchases at online and physical outlets.

If successful, the digital payment system could bring additional security to PayPal users as they will have no need for passwords -- one of the easiest ways for hackers to access an account. According to Samsung, your biometric data is not stored; instead, the smartphone has a unique, encrypted key which verifies your identity instead.

PayPal's chief product officer Hill Ferguson said:

"By working with Samsung to leverage fingerprint authentication technology on their new Galaxy S5, we are able to demonstrate that consumers don't need to face a tradeoff between security and convenience. 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 Samsung-PayPal fingerprint authentication feature will be available in April in 26 countries worldwide, including the U.S. and United Kingdom.

Via: CNET

Image credit: ZDNet/CBS Interactive

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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