A method of fingerprint verification in which an input fingerprint is compared with a previously registered fingerprint, wherein the degree of correlation between a first section of the registered fingerprint and the input fingerprint is first determined by first-stage verification processing. If the correlation is higher than a first threshold value the input fingerprint is accepted, if lower than a second threshold value it is rejected, and if between these values, second-stage verification processing is executed in which a different section of the registered fingerprint is compared with the input fingerprint, and a final judgement made accordingly.
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