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The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first to support PayPal's new fingerprint-authorized payments

By Luis D.

Published: Apr 03, 2014, 6:04 AM

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first to support PayPal's new fingerprint-authorized payments

Owners of the Samsung Galaxy S5 will beable to make “broad” use of its in-built fingerprint sensor tomake payments, MIT's Technology Review journal reports. To make useof the system, which will be explained shortly, you must registeryour device's identity with its cryptographic chip first, and linkyour fingerprint to your PayPal account. Afterwards, PayPal will askyou to swipe the fingerprint reader anytime an app or site asks forlog-in credentials.

This particular payment system is thefirst commercial implementation of a new authorization protocoldeveloped by the FIDO Alliance, a security group of technologicalcompanies that include BlackBerry, Google, Lenovo, MasterCard,Microsoft, and PayPal. The protocol is designed so that a record ofyour fingerprint is never transmitted to an outside party. Instead,data from the fingerprint reader is used to generate a cryptographickeyc which is combined with a second key from the device’scryptographic chip to make a third key. This way, the final key can’tbe used to somehow "decode" the fingerprint that was usedto generate it.

The Galaxy S5 is the first and onlyconsumer device so far that supports PayPal’s FIDO-basedauthorization system. PayPal isn't saying when other devices willfollow suit, but industry representatives assert that fingerprintreaders will become ubiquitous in near-future smart-devices.

source: MITTechnology Review

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Luis D. has a multitude of news, features and review articles written for PhoneArena. He adeptly demystifies complex technology topics, such as the development of advanced materials for bendable device displays and the evolution of chipset manufacturing.