Chip and pin `to give way to biometrics`

Chip and pin technology may soon become outdated and replaced by biometric recognition to beat credit card fraud, a leading industry body has claimed.

Since the introduction of chip and pin on all credit and debit transactions in February 2006, there has been a marked decrease in the amount of credit card fraud taking place.

However, such technology may soon give way to finger print and iris recognition technologies in order to decrease credit card crime further, the UK trade association for payments APACS, has claimed.

A spokesman for APACS said: "In ten years time we probably won`t be using a pin anymore, we`ll be using biometric forms of identification. At the moment that technology is not robust enough for the banking industry to use but in ten years` time we will probably be using one of those methods."

Research published by APACS last week stated that card fraud losses in the UK high street have declined dramatically since peaking at £218.8 million in 2004. Losses in 2006 totalled £72.1 million.