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BNP Paribas to charge €24 a year for biometric card

French bank BNP Paribas is offering its Visa Premier cardholders the chance to upgrade to a contactless fingerprint option - for a €24 annual fee.

5 comments

BNP Paribas to charge €24 a year for biometric card

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

BNP began trialling the cards - which use technology from Thales - with customers last year.

They enable users to make contactless payments above the usual limit by placing a finger on the card at the point-of-sale.

According to local reports, all customers will be offered the biometric cards later this year but will have to pay an extra €24 on top of their existing €134 annual card fee.

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Comments: (5)

A Finextra member 

134 euros existing fee. Isn't that a bit too high. 

A nice new feature rollout though.

Stavros Raftopoulos Delivery Manager / Program Manager at Netcompany Intrasoft S.A.

This is Visa Premier, so the fee may be justified by the benefits. 

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

@StavrosRaftopoulos + 1.

Visa Premier offers several benefits. 

https://banqo.fr/en/blog/top-8-benefits-visa-premier.html. 

For me, just the Travel Insurance is worth every bit of the €134 annual card fee. All other benefits are icing on the cake.

Fingerprint based contactless payments above usual limit is a very cool feature and well worth the extra €24 annual fee.

A Finextra member 

I agree - the headline alone misses the point that the consumer is already paying a fee for additional services already and €24 add is relatively small.

What would be interesting to know is will this be offered to all account holders for the same price?

Anything that removes the need for PIN and makes the POS transactions contract free (and therefore germ free) is a big push in the current environment.

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

By "all account holders", 

If you mean "all bank account holders", then surely no since it's a credit card feature.

If you mean "all credit card account holders", then also probably no since it's only a Visa Premier credit card feature.

I'd interpret the last sentence in the article to mean "it would be offered to all Visa Premier credit card customers for the said fee". 

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