MasterCard may go for selfies to authorise payments

New York: If you never felt inclined towards taking selfies, you may have to change your habit now. MasterCard is mulling to introduce a new technology that allows shoppers to authorise a payment with a selfie instead of a password or signature.

MasterCard's president of enterprise security solutions Ajay Bhalla was reported as calling it the "next wave of technology that will change the consumer experience for shopping digitally", www.news.com.au reported.

A selfie, by definition, is a self-taken photo, normally with a phone. "It's all part of our role in making commerce available anywhere, any time, on any digital device," Bhalla said.

The new selfie payment technology will be implemented in MasterCard's Identity Check app. When a customer purchases a product from an online merchant that requires a verified identity, the customer's mobile phone will receive a 'push notification', which will open the app and ask to take a selfie.

While the customer poses for the selfie, they will be required to 'blink' to show the facial recognition scan software that they are a real person - in order to prevent criminals from exploiting the system by simply holding up the person's picture.

The new selfie technology will also remove the necessity of remembering a password, which can become an issue in a society dependent on multiple passwords.

MasterCard is also looking at voice or heartbeat recognition as payment options in the future.