MasterCard Adds Biometrics As Payment Confirmation Through Selfies

Whether we like it or not, the selfie craze is not dying down. Celebrities seem to have entered an unspoken contest of who can get the most “likes” on Facebook selfies or “hearts” on Instagram, proving that selfies – and all they say about us as humans – are here to stay.

That’s why MasterCard’s decision to exploit the trend might be rather smart. The American multinational company has recently revealed plans to implement a new system designed to lower the rates of card frauds: using digitized maps of their users’ faces as payment confirmation for any transaction.

Users will have to set up these maps of their faces on a MasterCard server; after that, the mobile app will allow them to pay either by fingerprint confirmation or by simply looking at the app it and blinking once. Creators included the blink so people won’t be able to use a picture of the user to cheat the system.

On each payment, the resulting hash will be compared with the one the user has stored originally on the server. This feature will only be available on mobile, so users will have to download the MasterCard phone app.

Ajay Bhalla, the security mastermind behind the innovative solutions that MasterCard comes up with, said he was rather confident that the millennials – a generation completely immersed in the concept of selfies – will think the feature is cool.

Before the new payment method can be rolled out commercially, MasterCard will host a pilot initiative where 500 users will check and provide feedback on the feature of using fingerprints and facial scans for transactions.

The digitized face maps will be available on several smartphone platforms, such as Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft, with whom MasterCard has signed partnerships with. Password protected codes which are currently in use for card payments are secure most of the time, except for the times when they are forgotten, intercepted or stolen.

Apple Pay has already incorporated biometrics in their payment method, and because Apple is such a trendsetter, more banks felt prompted to follow the lead.

Anticipating the public’s reaction to having their face stored yet on another server, Bhalla explained that MasterCard’s system will merely store data that can help them match faces, not reconstruct them.

Besides facial recognition, MasterCard has also announced to experiment with heartbeat and voice recognition, two features that are still in the company’s oven.
Image Source: Tech News Today

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Ryan Harris

Ryan has started his career as a web developer and designer before joining us. He enjoys the creativity work and loves experimenting with various techniques in both print and web. He covers the social media, technology and gadgets updates.