Smile! MasterCard Toys With Mobile Facial Recognition For Payments

MasterCard is labeling “successful” a biometrics payments trial (facial plus voice) where more than 14,000 transactions were confirmed in a closed iOS and Android pilot using only MasterCard employees, according to a Computerworld report.

An employee-only trial would ostensibly solely be a test of the authentication accuracy as employees would likely not reflect the consumer hesitation to allow for such biometric methods.

“The results were very exciting, yielding a successful verification rate of 98 percent, mixing a combination of voice and facial recognition. The process usually took less than 10 seconds,” Ajay Bhalla, Mastercard president for enterprise safety and security, was quoted saying. “The launch of Apple Pay last week marked a major milestone in payments technology. We are hugely proud to be part of it and we will be showcasing our wider security credentials at World Retail Congress in Paris at the end of this month.”