Voice Payment Card launched

Global technology company Thales has developed a solution to protect visually impaired people from fraud or mistakes made at shops.

The Thales Gemalto Voice Payment Card allows blind and visually impaired people to have a trusted and autonomous experience for daily payments, as the card vocalises the amount of each transaction before its validation.

Most banking services are not adapted for people with disabilities. 90% of visually impaired people have faced fraud or encountered a mistake at a point of sales. This statistic prompted Thales to develop a solution which offers trust and autonomy to people with impaired vision in their daily payment experiences. This solution, which vocalises each step of a transaction, is now certified by Visa and Mastercard.

Voice Payment Card users have to install an app on their mobile phone, which is associated with their card. Each time they make a payment, the mobile app vocalises the amount of the transaction before letting users validate it with their secret code.

The Thales Voice Payment Card works as a connected device that gets the amount from the point of sales terminal and communicates it to the mobile app via Bluetooth. The customer can then hear the information either through the phone’s speaker or through earphones. The solution is expected to be commercialised soon by several banks.

“With the support of Handsome1 (a French Fintech specialising in inclusive solutions) and based on Thales’ key expertise in developing secure and convenient payment solutions, we decided to tackle concerns faced by blind and visually impaired people,” says Bertrand Knopf, vice president of banking and payment services at Thales. “Since then, it appeared that the solution has proven to be useful for other disabilities.”