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Thales, a French company known in the payments industry for its digital-identity technology, on Thursday introduced a product that it says will allow visually impaired shoppers to verify the details of a card transaction while standing at the point of sale.
The Voice Payment Card, which Thales announced has been certified by Visa and Mastercard, draws on the company’s long experience in payments connectivity and security, the company said. Designed for everyday transactions, the product reads out each step in a card transaction, either out loud or through earbuds worn by the user, before the user verifies the payment with a PIN code. The transaction details, including the transaction total, are transmitted via Bluetooth to a mobile app.
Thales characterizes the Voice Payment Card as a “one-of-a-kind solution” and says it will be introduced commercially “soon” by “several” unnamed banks. The product includes services from Handsome, a France-based fintech that specializes in technology that aids persons with disabilities. Information was not immediately available regarding the cost of the technology, either to the store or to the user.
Further developments aimed at helping persons with other disabilities may be forthcoming soon, Thales hints. “With the support of Handsome, and based on Thales’s key expertise in developing secure and convenient payment solutions, we decided to tackle concerns faced by blind and visually impaired people. Since then, it appeared that the solution has proven to be useful for other disabilities,” said Bertrand Knopf, vice president for banking and payment services at Thales, in a statement.
While Thales’s digital-identity technology is familiar in the payments industry, the Paris-based company also develops products for the defense, aeronautics, space, and transport industries. The company’s point-of-sale payments technology includes the payShield 9000 hardware security module, which protects and validates PINs for card transactions. Thales acquired smart card and chip maker Gemalto N.V. in 2017.
