Mastercard is rolling out its Identity Check service, popularly known as selfie pay, to customers in Europe through a new mobile app.
The system was developed in partnership with Daon, and uses that company’s IdentityX platform to enable biometric authentication. It requires users to essentially take a video selfie, blinking in the process to ensure liveness, in order to confirm a transaction. Fingerprint scans are also supported.
Trial projects were rolled out in the US and Canada earlier this year in collaboration with BMO, and now the system is going live in across most of Europe. Mastercard says it hopes to launch the system worldwide next year.
TechCrunch reports, Mastercard hasn’t yet determined an official policy on how biometric credentials are stored; while a spokesperson affirmed that “[f]ingerprints are stored at the device level”, she could only say that Mastercard is “currently prototyping facial recognition to be converted and stored as encrypted code on some devices,” suggesting that Mastercard may be storing users’ facial biometric data on a server. The spokesperson did, however, emphasize Mastercard’s work with the FIDO Alliance, a strong advocate for the on-device approach.
Before its aforementioned North American launches, Identity Check was showcased at Mobile World Congress early this year in Barcelona, where we went hands-on with the mCommerce app.
Sources: TechCrunch, The Telegraph
(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)
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