You know what? Selfies, which we click mostly for posting on social networking sites, are now being using as a password for doing payments.
MasterCard, an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in New York, United States, is trying new facial recognition technology that would let customers verify their identity online by taking a selfie.
Mastercard’ s customers, who still use a system called SecureCode to verify their identity while shopping online, requires them to enter a password at the point of sale.
In an interview with CNN Money MasterCard executive Ajay Bhalla said that they want to identify the people for who they are not what they remember.
"We have too many passwords to remember and this creates extra problems for consumers and businesses. The new generation, this is into selfies…. I think they'll find it cool. They'll embrace it," he added.
According to a news report published on The Telegraph, in order to avoid problems like forgetting passwords, stealing or intercepting, many financial organisations and technology companies are testing biometrics as an alternative form of identification.
Like a British technology firm recently launched the world’s first emoji-only passcode, which allows people to log into their banks using four emoji characters, instead of PINs or passwords.
According to the report, during the trial period, some of the Mastercard's users or customers will be prompted to snap a photograph of their face using the Mastercard app on their smartphone at the online checkout point instead of entering password.
It is said that the app then converts the photo into 1s and 0s using facial recognition technology, and transmits it over the internet to MasterCard, which compares it with a stored code representing the cardholder's face. If the two codes match up, then the purchase will be approved.
Bhalla said that MasterCard will not be able to reconstruct the user's face from the data, and that the information will be transmitted and stored securely.
The company is currently testing the technology with 500 customers, and is planning a broader trial for later this year.
Along with the selfies, the company is experimenting with other forms of identification such as fingerprint scanning and voice recognition.
