CARDLAB INNOVATION APS

Their core work

CardLab Innovation is a Danish technology SME that develops smart card hardware with integrated biometric fingerprint sensors, enabling cardholders to authenticate payments and online transactions using a fingerprint-generated one-time password instead of static PINs or passwords. Their core product — the QuardCard — is a powered payment card that replaces SMS-based OTP tokens and traditional password systems for banking, e-commerce, and physical point-of-sale transactions. They operate squarely at the intersection of hardware security and financial services, targeting banks, payment processors, and e-commerce platforms that face regulatory pressure to implement strong customer authentication. Their H2020 trajectory — Phase 1 feasibility followed by a full Phase 2 development grant — confirms they moved a specific product from concept to market-ready prototype within the EU funding cycle.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

CardLab's H2020 portfolio is a single unbroken product arc rather than a shift in research direction: the 2016 SME-1 feasibility grant validated the QuardCard concept with no published keyword detail, while the 2017–2020 SME-2 project reveals the full commercial scope — online banking, e-commerce, physical payment infrastructure, and dynamic authentication. There is no pivot or broadening of domain between the two phases; they deepened and commercialised one specific technology rather than diversifying. The absence of early-phase keywords simply reflects the tighter scope of a feasibility study, not an earlier focus that was later abandoned.

CardLab is a single-product company on a commercialisation path — any future collaboration would likely centre on integrating or scaling the QuardCard technology into broader payment or identity ecosystems rather than exploring new research directions.

How they like to work

CardLab always led their own projects as sole or primary coordinator, reflecting the SME Instrument model where a single company drives its own innovation agenda. Their consortium footprint is minimal — one unique partner across two projects, both from the same country — indicating they work as an independent product developer rather than as a network builder. Anyone collaborating with them should expect to engage directly with the company's own product roadmap, not a shared research agenda.

CardLab's consortium network is extremely narrow: one unique partner across both projects, all within Denmark. This is characteristic of SME Instrument grants, which are designed for individual companies and impose no large consortium requirement.

What sets them apart

CardLab is one of a small number of European SMEs to have navigated the full SME Instrument Phase 1 → Phase 2 pipeline with a single hardware product in the biometric payment card space, giving them a validated proof-of-concept and a multi-year development track record under EU scrutiny. Their differentiation is the combination of form factor (standard payment card dimensions) with on-card fingerprint processing and dynamic OTP generation — a hardware-first answer to strong customer authentication that does not depend on a mobile phone or network connectivity. For a consortium partner or technology buyer, this means access to a production-tested card security platform rather than a research prototype.

Highlights from their portfolio

• QuardCard (Phase 2)
  At €911,493 this is the company's defining grant — a full SME Instrument Phase 2 award that funded multi-year development of the biometric OTP card across online banking, e-commerce, and physical payment channels.
• QuardCard (Phase 1)
  The €50,000 feasibility grant that preceded Phase 2, demonstrating that CardLab successfully executed the two-stage SME Instrument pathway from concept validation to full product development.