SmartMetric, Inc. (OTC: SMME) is pleased to announce that its fourth-generation card is nearing completion that will allow the company to start its sales and marketing in the United States.

Having developed earlier versions of its fingerprint-activated biometric credit card, the company had to make changes based on requests from within the credit card industry along with component changes that came about from the supply issues during the pandemic.

“Changes to the electronics brought about component supply issues along with adding additional features inline with feedback from the credit card issuing industry caused us to suffer substantial delays in bringing our final and what is our fourth-generation card to market,” said SmartMetric’s President and CEO, Chaya Hendrick.

“Our electronic assembly is done in China which left us suffering from constant factory closures during the past couple of years. Our engineering design and software development is done between our engineers in the USA and Tel Aviv, Israel. With the core of our operating system development done in Israel,” said Chaya Hendrick.

“Our main engineering team is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and we chose not to have our operating system and key functional software for our card transferred to the electronics assembler in China but rather retain control and security over our software by having it kept in the hands of our Israel-based engineering team. The current situation in Israel has been very difficult for our engineers who some have been called up while others having to deal with family members who have been called up and sent away from their homes. This has caused a disruption to our final process of installing our system software into our product. Nonetheless under extreme circumstances we are moving forward and expect to have our most advanced biometric credit card completed for presentation to the credit card issuing industry in short order,” said the President and CEO of SmartMetric.

The SmartMetric biometric fingerprint-activated credit card is the most advanced biometric credit card created that uses the card holder's own fingerprint that is stored inside the card to turn the card on as it is inserted into or tapped over a regular credit card reader or ATM.

At all times the card is used whether at a retail store, gas pump or ATM, the card's contact chip and contactless RFID/NFC chip is only activated following a fingerprint match with the user's pre-stored fingerprint stored inside the card.

“SmartMetric has made prior versions of its biometric card however it has made advances in its functioning and capabilities based on what the main players in the credit card industry wanted,” said Chaya Hendrick.

The SmartMetric biometric fingerprint recognition technology built inside of the credit and debit card uses embedded biometric technology to positively recognize the card holder and then only after a positive fingerprint recognition, turn on the card's EMV contact and contactless payments chip.

Market research has shown that 70% of current credit card users are willing to pay $70.00 for a biometric secured credit card. This is a low pricing limit with higher pricing for the card from banks to consumers very possible. The same research showed that nearly 70% of the existing 100s of millions of credit card users would prefer to use a biometric credit card for the added sense of security that a biometric card brings.

According to an article published by Finder.com¹ the number of credit card accounts open in the United States is 564,500,000. This is an all-time high for the United States.

The average American owns three credit cards. 83% of Americans own at least one credit card. 14% of Americans own at least 10 credit cards.

To view the SmartMetric Biometric Card please follow this link - Video of the SmartMetric Biometric Card. To view the company website: www.smartmetric.com.

¹ 2023 Credit card debt and spending statistics in the US | finder.com

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