MasterCard wants to use your face to help fend off fraudsters. Using a new system called MasterCard Identity Check -- or, colloquially, "selfie pay" -- the credit card company will use biometric methods like face recognition and fingerprint scans to better secure online shopping.
Right now, Mastercard offers a feature that financial institutions can enable that lets customers set up a password for online payments to help prevent fraud. The new system will use the same principle, but instead of relying on a password that could be forgotten or stolen, it uses your face or fingerprint.
Consumers will go through all the normal steps of filling out credit card information when making an online purchase, but this feature adds another step: The website will send a notification through an app on customers' smartphones that asks them to verify their identity. This can be done either through a fingerprint scan or by using the phone's camera to take a brief, selfie-like, video.
When taking the "selfie," the user will have to blink to prove that it's a live person and not just an old photo being used to spoof the system.
MasterCard started testing the feature with nearly 1,000 consumers in the United States and the Netherlands last year. It plans to make it more broadly available through partnered banks this summer in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and potentially other markets.