Mastercard tests the future of biometric payments security

biometric payment fingerprint

A pilot of Mastercard’s biometric security protocol showed a 98 per cent success rate, combining fingerprint and voice recognition.

Mastercard has already implemented mass biometric card technology with the recent launch of the Nigerian eID card scheme. But the launch of Apple Pay has prompted to test a protocol for wider implementation.

The card provider recently held a closed pilot with Mastercard employees to understand the consumer experience around voice and facial recognition.

“We created a beta mobile app which we tested in ane-commerce environment on over 14,000 transactions,” says MasterCard. “The test group, drawn from MasterCard employees around the world, used both Android and iOS operating systems. The results were very exciting, yielding a successful verification rate of 98%, mixing a combination of voice and facial recognition.”

Biometric security is gaining traction as the future of mobile payments security. Barclays launched a biometric reader for corporate client login earlier this month, and Simple and Mint have both added support for Apple’s TouchID and Android-powered wearable devices to their services.

“The launch of Apple Pay will start to bring true scale to the next generation of payments authentication,” says MasterCard. “Our challenge is to take lessons from the different applications of biometrics already in place and elevate them into the next generation of authentication, not just for one platform, but for the mass market globally.”

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