PaperCut Biometric capability

PaperCut biometric capability is one of the things that we get asked about a lot and we felt it was time to just go over a few things. We receive regular enquiries (typically tenders) wanting to know if PaperCut Embedded software supports biometrics,  the answer is fairly simple and in all honestly has very little to do with PaperCut.

First up a little background information. The current crop of biometric readers work over USB, because of this the MFD running the embedded software needs to support the biometric device via USB. MFD support for USB hardware such as keyboards,  proximity card readers and magstripe card readers differs greatly between MFD manufacturer. Most MFD brands support a vast range of keyboard emulating devices.

The biometric reader hardware effectively emulates a USB card reader when connected to a MFD. We won’t bore you with the details but in short, if the machine supports the USB device then generally PaperCut can take advantage of this and read data from the USB device as well.