MasterCard Introduces Selfie Security For Online Purchases

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Biometric security checks would confirm user ID.

MasterCard has announced that it will be rolling out facial recognition technology to confirm user ID during online purchases to 15 countries by the summer. Based in biometrics, users would essentially take a selfie through a MasterCard app prior to each online purchase with their card, which then would be compared to a stored image on the servers. Essentially, then, the user’s face replaces the traditional password.

At the Mobile World Congress tech show in Barcelona last month, the credit card company unveiled its new “selfie pay” feature, which will allow cardholders to use an image of their face or a fingerprint to verify their identity when making payments online.

“We want to identify people for who they are, not what they remember,” explained Ajay Bhalla, MasterCard’s president for enterprise safety and security. MasterCard asserts that selfies and fingerprint scans are safer than typed passwords, particularly since many passwords are hackable.

The facial recognition and authentication technology was tested last year in North America and the Netherlands, and now will be officially expanded to customers in 15 countries by this summer. MasterCard told the BBC that 92 percent of its test subjects “preferred the new system to passwords.”

Bhalla also told the Verge that MasterCard is exploring features that sound rather sci-fi, like heartbeat recognition that utilizes a sensor to read a person's electrocardiogram, the electrical signal produced by the heart.

“While even fingerprint or facial recognition requires input from the user, heartbeat recognition can take place seamlessly in the background,” The Verge explained. “You just wear a bracelet and it sends a signal to devices you're near to prove you're you.”

“I think the whole biometric space is a great way of protecting yourself when you are doing payments,” Ann Cairns, head of international markets for MasterCard, told CNBC. “There are a whole range of biometrics that say ‘I’m me, I'm making a payment’ and it just makes the whole thing more secure.”

“The problem with online payments has always been that the card doesn't need to be present, hence the credit card companies have charged more for the transactions to cover the costs of fraud,” Windsor Holden, head of forecasting at the U.K. tech consultancy Juniper Research, told the BBC. “If they can introduce a mechanism that makes the system more secure than merely asking for a password, then the hope would be that fraud levels decrease and the savings can be passed back onto merchants, and perhaps consumers too.”