Mastercard app lets online shoppers pay with a selfie
Mobile app launches in UK and Europe to let shoppers authenticate payments with their face.
Mastercard is about to start letting customers in the UK and Europe pay for goods online by using their face instead of a password.
Having already been trialled in the US and Canada, the service, called Identity Check Mobile, asks for customers to pose for a photograph of their face to authenticate online purchases.
Shoppers set up the Identity Check smartphone app by taking a selfie with their smartphone and uploading the photo to Mastercard, which then creates a digital map of their face, ready to be used when a purchase needs verifying.
From then on, instead of entering a long password to confirm online purchases the shopper is sent a notification to their phone asking for a selfie. Hold the phone up, blink when told (so you can't spoof it with a photo) and Mastercard will authorise the payment.
It is similar to the two-factor authentication systems used by Facebook, Twitter and others, but asks for a photo instead of sending a one-off passcode to your phone.
Mastercard claims the system will "dramatically" speed up the current online checkout process while "also improving security". The service is now being rolled out across Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Mastercard says selfie payments will stretch "across the globe" from the start of 2017.
Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security at Mastercard, said: "Shopping in person has been revolutionised thanks to advances like contactless cards, mobile payments and wearables, and now we are making Identity Check Mobile a reality for online shopping in Europe and soon, the world."
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