This week in mobile identity was all about payment protection. This should come as no surprise with Tuesday’s news that Android devices will be sporting built-in fingerprint sensors in six months. The ETA comes courtesy of USA Today, who in an interview with FIDO President Michael Barrett got that nifty tidbit of information while reporting on the battle for strong online identity standards.
The next day USA Today continued on topic of FIDO, but with a bit of unauthorized breaking news: uncovering that MasterCard will be joining the organization. This marks the first major payment network to fully commit to the standard, and seems to be a result of the coming proliferation of biometric authenticators on smartphones and tablets.
MasterCard is a company to keep an eye out for in the world of mCommerce. It already has shown initiative in past identity standards and has in development a mobile phone app called MasterPass that will allow for cardless payment at real life points of sale. This is a very real near future of mobile money, and seems tame in comparison to fellow FIDO member PayPal’s ambitious solution: an app that wirelessly communicates to store registers allowing for instant, no-checkout purchase.
All of this must sound very encouraging to Fingerprint Cards, whose aggressive posturing in the mobile markets (specifically in Asia) are closely tied to coming innovations in mobile enabled payments. This week the manufacturer was busy as usual, selling one million swipe sensors for mobile phones (three of which are already available in Japan, Korea and China), and acquired over one hundred wireless patents form an unnamed holder.
The mCommerce news is just getting warmed up. Next week we look to Las Vegas and the Money 2020 emerging financial services convention. Stay tuned to @MobileIDWorld on Twitter to be sure not to miss a beat.
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