Rising concern for banks today is not about attracting customers; it’s all about retaining them. A recent study confirmed that most of the bank apps (we are talking about 70%) are prone to virus attacks and phishing. Security issues are widely threatening to the banks as well as it’s customers.
Well, fret not says MasterCard. The company now has a new way of authenticating your credentials without leaving a scope of any cyber-attacks. Now every time you purchase something, all you got to do is click a selfie!
MasterCard payments will now be authenticated by your “Selfie” or “fingerprints”. “The new generation, which is into selfies … I think they’ll find it cool. They’ll embrace it,” MasterCard’s Ajay Bhalla said. With mobile manufacturers introducing phones designed for selfies more than performance, this is probably a thoughtful move.
Firstly, the user will have to download the MasterCard app and during a purchase, authentication can be either given by finger prints or Selfies. If it’s a selfie (which most will select at least to see how it works) you need to blink for the app to capture your photo. The app will examine your face characteristics and convert the picture into an algorithm that will be sent to server. The company pledges it’s users that it will not, in any case, store your picture, it will only confirm the identity based on your face features.
The company believes that this will be their solution to counter attack any cyber hackers. The pilot project will soon kick off with 500 participants to test the app’s vulnerability and test it’s authentication quality. The experiment will happen in the US and once the trial run is assuring, the same feature will be introduced worldwide. We really do hope it works as face features can’t be faked leading to a safer payment experience.
The PIN approach and OTP authentication methods have a 10% failure chance if the mobile of the user is stolen and sometimes the bank websites close down for maintenance leading to problems in receiving the code as the user is kept behind the drapes but with selfie used for approval, only the actual user will have to confirm it.
Even if a person wants to misuse the system, it very hard as finger prints cannot be replicated and when it comes to selfie, a picture of the actual user cannot help approve the purchase. Certain features that define your face like the color of your eyes, moles etc will be captured by MasterCard and a picture of yours is not a real time picture, hence the authentication is bound to fail.
This new way of authentication sure is more fun and trendy but what’s most important is the effectiveness of the selfie in trying to match your face characteristics with that stored with the MasterCard people. The quickness in matching up these two images is in question, but if it works, Mastercard will be the most sought after cards.
