A new Mastercard payment solution verified with fingerprints... and selfies

The good news: the use of chip credit cards is showing results in reducing credit card fraud at retail establishments. Mastercard has seen a 54% decrease in fraud in the past year from the retailers accepting their chip credit card.

The bad news is that online fraud – “card not present” transactions – is on the rise. 

Retailers have been testing out different ways of fighting online fraud, but current results have not been optimal. Some buyers are abandoning their shopping carts due to the “excessive payment security checks” added by some retailers. Other online buyers are being wrongly associated with fraud, a "false positive". In 2015, U.S. Retailers lost an estimated $118 billion in potential sales from buyers being declined by financial institutions, due to suspicion of fraud.

Mobile apps such as Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay give smartphone and tablet users the ability to make payments with fingerprint authentication. 

Mastercard has been testing a new solution that will allow buyers to have the option of authenticating payment for online purchase with a fingerprint – or a selfie photo. The mobile app is called Identity Check. It was tested first in the Netherlands, and then in Canada and the U.S. A larger roll-out of the program, in partnership with banks and merchants, is due to be launched “in the coming weeks”. That sounds like it will be just in time for this year’s holiday season.



Pay-by-selfie, pay-by-fingerprint: Coming your way soon after MasterCard's Dutch experiment

By Tina Amirtha for Benelux, April 19, 2016

MasterCard transactions to be verified with selfies and fingerprints

By Chris Burt for BiometricUpdate.com, September 15, 2016