VERIFICATION OF FINGERPRINTS

In said method, when the comparison minutia of a comparison fingerprint (23) are compared to reference minutia (19) that are stored on a chip card (10), a search is made for additional minutia pairs starting from a baseline pair, which consists of a pair of respective corresponding comparison and reference minutia (19), said additional pairs forming a single related chain of minutia pairs through the comparison or reference fingerprint. The minutia of a potential minutia pair are assessed in relation to at least three predetermined reference minutia pairs of the chain of minutia pairs that have already been determined, said reference minutia pairs being determined by means of their position in the chain. The concordance of selected comparison minutia with selected reference minutia (19) is assessed using individual comparisons of the distances and/or angles between the respective comparison minutia and the reference minutia. The specification of a single possible path permits reference minutia (19) to be skipped, if no comparison minutia that matches the latter can be found.