NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME) -- A report by the Aite Group ⁽¹⁾ predicts losses due to false credit and debit card declines will grow to $443 billion by 2021. This dwarfs the losses from card fraud alone.

Despite the online industry’s best efforts, new data reveals that both e-commerce fraud and the constant incidents of false declines continue to seriously impair retailer revenues and profits.

Javelin Strategy & Research ⁽²⁾ estimates that payment-related fraud affected 14.4 million consumers last year. Fraud losses on existing credit and debit cards in 2018 was $6.4 billion. According to Javelin the value of “false declines” per year has now reached a staggering $118 billion.

When a card user's card is falsely declined, a major credit card brand says cardholders tend to change attitudes around the card and retailers. They are reported to going on to say that “39% abandon that card after a false decline, while a quarter decrease card usage.” Additionally, more alarmingly 32% say they plan to stop shopping at the retailer where they were declined. ⁽³⁾

More “affluent” cardholders account for half of all false declines, as they “tend to spend more, more often, especially when traveling.” Having some of your most affluent and best customers being wrongly rejected at checkout with 32% of these valuable customers then stopping altogether shopping in the future at that retailer is an economic disaster for the retailers and a huge loss of business for the credit card issuers.

“Having consumers use a biometric card that only works when the real card holder touches the card will dramatically decrease the false rejections of good card customers thereby potentially saving retailers and card issuers billions of dollars a year,” said today SmartMetric’s President and CEO, Chaya Hendrick.

SmartMetric makes a biometric card that uses the SmartMetric ultra small fully functional fingerprint scanner that is embedded inside the credit card. The credit card has a small sensor on the card's surface that when touched instantly scans the card holder's fingerprint. If the card is being used by the proper card holder then the card will be turned on.

SmartMetric turns the card users’ biometrics into the key that unlocks the card. Using the power of biometric security technology SmartMetric brings the ultimate in card user authentication to the credit card.

The SmartMetric biometric credit card is planned for release early in 2020 incorporating the operating system and payments chip of a major global payments card chip supplier. The credit card integrator provides chip and operating systems to more than 500 card issuing banks worldwide.

SmartMetric is a USA-based company with sales and marketing partnerships in Latin America, Europe and the United States. Engineering of the biometric card electronics is done in-house and is the owned intellectual property of the company.

To view the SmartMetric Biometric Card please follow this link - . To view the company website: .

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