Single step authentication on Galaxy S5 leaves PayPal accounts open to abuse say German researchers.

PayPal was left fighting a rear-guard action last night after it emerged the fingerprint scanner seen on the Samsung Galaxy 5 smartphone can easily be bypassed.

Germany’s Security Research Labs says the spoofing system allows access to a user’s PayPal account, which is an important issue since a key feature of the scanner is one-step access to the PayPal money payment system – effectively replacing the user’s ID and password with a fingerprint swipe.