PayU, a leading digital financial services provider in India, has launched Flash Pay, an industry-first biometric authentication solution for card payments. This innovative solution, introduced at the Global Fintech Festival (GFF) 2024, is designed to enhance transaction success rates, streamline the payment experience, and boost security. Flash Pay combines convenience with stringent security protocols, catering to both customer expectations and banks’ authentication requirements.

Flash Pay leverages advanced biometric technology—such as fingerprint and facial recognition—enabling swift and secure payments. With transactions completed in less than 10 seconds, Flash Pay eliminates the need for traditional OTP-based authentication, reducing delays, manual errors, and the risk of fraud associated with OTP sharing.

For merchants, Flash Pay offers a seamless authentication solution across all major card networks. Its plug-and-play system ensures quick and secure biometric payments, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving loyalty. Flash Pay will be made available through SDKs, APIs, and web-based transactions, catering to various merchant types and their unique needs.

Manas Mishra, Chief Product Officer at PayU, said, “At PayU, we take pride in serving the digital payments ecosystem by consistently launching industry-leading, innovative payment solutions that are safe, secure and easy to adopt, aligning with RBI’s vision. We fully recognize the potential and impact of multi-factor authentication (MFA) in unlocking opportunities for innovative and secure payment solutions, all while maintaining the highest levels of customer trust. Flash Pay reflects our dedication to customer-centricity and our ongoing efforts to provide secure, efficient, and seamless card payment solutions that meet the evolving needs of our users.”

Banks will benefit from Flash Pay’s seamless integration with their existing ACS (Access Control Server) infrastructure, which typically supports OTP-based authentication. Operating under the industry-standard 3D Secure protocols from EMVCo, Flash Pay incorporates advanced security features like device binding and jailbreak detection. Supported by a robust fraud risk management engine, it gives banks greater control over customer authentication, ensuring high levels of security. The solution also aligns with the Reserve Bank of India’s latest guidelines on Additional Factor Authentication (AFA) and can easily switch to OTP when necessary.

During its debut at GFF 2024, Flash Pay was demonstrated in partnership with South Indian Bank, a long-time collaborator of Wibmo. In addition to enabling biometric authentication for online card payments, South Indian Bank customers can use the innovative Swipe-to-Pay feature to authenticate transactions on the bank’s app.

Sony A, Chief Information Officer, South Indian Bank, said, “We’re thrilled to partner with PayU to launch Flash Pay, the embedded payment offering, powered by Wibmo, a PayU company. Flash Pay enables banks to effortlessly enable biometric payments for their cards with minimal tech effort, delivering a secure payment experience to the customers. SIB is happy to partner with PayU make the issuer app biometric authentication live and also pilot with the merchant app for GFF.”

Backed by Prosus, PayU operates under the regulation of the Reserve Bank of India and offers cutting-edge digital payment solutions tailored to the needs of the Indian market. Serving over 500,000 businesses, including top enterprises and SMBs, PayU provides payment gateway solutions that support 150+ payment methods, including credit/debit cards, net banking, UPI, and wallets. As a leader in the affordability ecosystem, PayU enables businesses to offer card-based EMIs, pay-later options, and cardless EMIs with ease, all while delivering industry-best success rates and a seamless checkout experience.