MasterCard seems intent on doing away with more traditional forms of password protection for its users, announcing that the company will be rolling out a new, innovative selfie and fingerprint payments system in order to authenticate purchases made online, according to CNN Money.
The premise of the concept is quite simple. Instead of the traditional password system, users would simply need to take a real-time selfie, and/or a fingerprint scan in order to authenticate a transaction. This eliminates the chances that hackers or thieves are making a purchase using another person's account.
In order to make the selfie authentication more secure, users would need to download a special dedicated app, which turns on a smartphone's camera and instructs the user to blink, thereby proving that the selfie is legitimate, reports Money via Yahoo! Finance.
For users of the latest smartphones such as the iPhone 6S and the Galaxy S7, the device's fingerprint reader could also be used to authenticate transactions. Of course, for those with phones that do not have dedicated fingerprint readers, the selfie system is a very good alternative.
The introduction of the new system is seen by analysts as MasterCard's attempt at cutting down on the company's false declines, which happen when a transaction is rejected due to suspected fraud, reports The Economic Times.
False declines have cost the company almost $118 billion a year, about 13 times the cost of actual fraud.
The selfie and fingerprint authentication system is set to be rolled out by major banks in the U.S., U.K., Canada and other European countries within the year.
