MasterCard to launch ‘selfie pay’ in the US, Canada and Europe this summer

Selfie pay
SELFIE CONFIDENCE: MasterCard is to roll out biometric authentication this summer

Consumers across the US, Canada and parts of Europe will soon be able to authenticate their online transactions with their fingerprint or face using MasterCard’s ‘selfie pay’ system. The confirmed launch of the service — expected this summer — follows a successful pilot in the Netherlands that resulted in nine out of ten participants deciding that they would “definitely” like to replace their password with biometric identification.

After the completion of the pilot, which was launched in August 2015 by the payment network in partnership with International Card Services and Dutch bank ABN Amro, 77% of the 750 participating cardholders indicated that they want to continue using a fingerprint or facial recognition to complete payments and 75% of users are convinced that biometric payments will decrease fraud.

Of those surveyed, 95% of the fingerprint users and 80% of the facial recognition users indicated that shopping became more convenient using biometric authentication.

Possibilities

“We are now examining the possibilities to integrate our technology in the banking and tech giants’ apps to make payment using a selfie or fingerprint even easier,” says Arjan Bol, country manager of MasterCard Netherlands. “The Dutch consumer is very progressive in embracing new technologies.”

“Biometrics, unlike passwords, ensures convenience,” adds André IJbema, manager of risk management at ICS. “People forget passwords, making the payment process unnecessarily long and complex so we expect that passwords will slowly become obsolete in favour of a more user friendly alternative, such as biometrical identification.”

MasterCard unveiled its plans to trial ‘selfie pay’ technology in July 2015.

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