As the customers tend to move from credit cards to new technologies, MasterCard is enabling online shoppers to take a selfie in verifying their identity to make payments. Customers would be able to do their purchases without the need of entering a password or pin.
Developing technologies in biometrics have been assisting financial institutions as well as merchants to free the consumers from providing passwords and pins which had been the main focus at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
MasterCard showed offits Identity Check – `Selfie Pay’ app which enables users to verify their identity with their bank by snapping a selfie by saying a phrase or utilising a fingerprint. The company had shown the software in August, with Mountain View, California based First Tech Credit Union and Dutch bank ABN Amro.
It intends to license it to U.S. consumers towards mid-2016 and by 2017, internationally. Bob Reany, senior vice president of MasterCard for identity solutions commented that he hated passwords and that they were improving and making it safer at the same time for consumers. MasterCard has been investing in biometric technology solutions being aware of opportunity of offering more secure payment choices to clients, addressing a pain point for consumer.
New Biomimetic Technology
According to a survey of MasterCard around 53% of the shoppers tend to forget passwords almost once a week, which is a loss of 10 minutes when they haveto reset their accounts. This ends up in more than a third of them abandoning an online or a mobile purchase.
The representatives from MasterCard had demonstrated on the show floor, a variety of new biomimetic technologies of the company that had been tested together with partners. The Nvmi Band seemed to most interesting.
The Canadian start-up had developed an exclusive technology which influences the wearer’s exceptional cardiac signature also known as your heart rate as a biometric identifier. Reany stated that the next wave would be wearable which will be going from low friction to no friction.
That would actually be a sea change. Karl Martin, founder and CTO founder of Nymi mentioned in a press release that by working with partners such as TD and MasterCard, they have been effectively demonstrating that continuous authentication could be a more secured and convenient way in making retail payments.
Payment – Fingerprint/Face Recognition
In order to access the new function, user would have to download the Identity Check Mobile app wherein they can authorise payment with a fingerprint scan or face recognition. While utilising a retailer’s online site or an app, MasterCard consumers would be receiving on their handset, a pop-up screen which would prompt them to authorise the payment via a password, scan or a photograph.
To make sure that the user is really seeing the camera of the phone and not holding up a photo of someone, they would have to perform a blink gesture. The firm has rolled out their services in around 12 countries all across Europe, after successful trials in the Netherlands, US and Canada. It had been mentioned by the company that 92% of its test subjects desired the new system to passwords.
US-based MasterCard expects more countries would be following suit in the next year. Usually people need to enter passwords eight times each day for 10 various online accounts or application which they tend to use regularly. Over one in five tend to use the same password for everything and 58% seems to depend on a few variations.
