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In the last years, there have been multiple approaches to stimulate the usage of membership cards by integrating various technological and digital solutions. More recent “technological” membership cards, such as (Man City, 2021), (Curve OS, 2021), (BrilliantTS, 2021), already integrate loyalty and directional marketing mechanisms (Mollah, 2014). Evermore they can be used as payment methods, which attempt to combine security with usability and low usage friction (i.e., minimize the amount of time needed to process a payment transaction), while some additionally combine multiple payment methods in one (Curve OS, 2021), (BrilliantTS, 2021).
This section depicts some of the most relevant technological components integrated in membership cards, namely regarding Authentication, (Physical) Payments, and Directional Marketing. The proposed membership card system is one of the first to conciliate the three referred components while offering a safe frictionless solution into a convenient wearable device that fits inside the user’s wallet and protects it against loses and thefts.
Authentication
With the development of digital technologies and the proliferation of information, it is critical to implement authentication methods capable of validating the users’ identity both in the physical and digital worlds.
Current high security solutions such as the ones presented by last generation payment methods (e.g., PSD2 – Payment Services Directive (EBF, 2019)) already demand for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) solutions. These SCA solutions rely on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) that combine at least 2 authentication factors of distinct natures, namely: i) Identity- based methods (Rui et al., 2018), which rely in biometric approaches that measure and analyze the unique features of the human body (e.g., voice recognition, face recognition); ii) Knowledge-based methods (Katsini, 2016), which rely on confidential information known by the user (e.g., PINs, passwords); iii) Possession-based methods, which rely on information contained, encrypted and/or generated by objects exclusively owned by the user (e.g., matrix cards, USB authenticators (Yubico, 2021)).