The team of PrivatBank and the Ukrainian start-up MAWI Solutions presented at the international exhibition FinovateSpring 2018 in San Francisco a biometric payment bracelet MAWI Pay with the technology of contactless Mastercard payment.

The uniqueness of the solution lies in the technology of authenticating the owner of the bracelet using an electrocardiogram. Only the owner of the bracelet can pay by the device in the outlets: if the bracelet is put on the hand of another person, the smart device will recognize this and disable the payment function.

"We've done a lot of research to make sure that the ECG is a unique biometric identifier. Our algorithms have learned to determine with high accuracy a person with just a few strokes of the heart. The quality of recognition is not affected either by physical exertion, by changes in the age of a person, or by stress. We spent more than a year to ensure that the technology was resistant to all of the above factors, and the accuracy was comparable to the accuracy of fingerprint and other biometrics. In the nearest time, our engineers will validate the technology together with Swiss scientists from the Idiap Martigny Institute to officially get the status of biometrics,” Ron Friedman said, MAWI Solutions CEO.

The technology of contactless Mastercard payment allows you to quickly, conveniently and safely make daily payments using a card, a portable device or a mobile phone. The popularity of such payments is steadily growing: in Europe over the past year the number of contactless cards and devices has grown by 36%, and the number of contactless transactions has doubled. Experts predict that 62% of wearable devices by 2020 will have a payment function.

“For PrivatBank this is a very interesting experience of creating a payment solution at the junction of medtech and financial technologies, we received a lot of positive feedback from US bankers who were at the conference and are preparing to continue work on launching this solution for PrivatBank's customers. The creation of such a prototype is the joint merit of the bank, Mastercard and "Plastic Cards", - Egor Avetisov, Creative director at PrivatBank, commented on a new technology.

"As early as the beginning of the year, Mastercard called the 2018th year of wearable devices, the development of which mainly drives biometric authentication. According to our research, 37% of Ukrainians are ready to pay using wearable devices and 34% prefer biometric methods of confirming payments. This is one of the highest rates among Europeans. We were happy to give a start to a unique solution that will make a new step in the development of innovation and non-cash payments,” Yuriy Batkhin said, Director of business development of MasterCard in Ukraine.

"Plastic Card" as a manufacturer of bank cards and other high-tech payment instruments are very pleased to participate in such a project. Possessing the newest technological resources, our company understands how important such innovations are in medicine and in banking technologies. We are ready to continue to support and develop interesting Ukrainian start-ups,“ Maxim Komisarenko said, Business Development Manager of Plastic Cards.