Mastercard Looks To Selfie As Payment Mode

Just when we recently heard two bits of disturbing news about a baby dolphin dying simply because it was shared around a group of people who wanted to snap a selfie with it, as well as a man who dragged a small shark onto the shore to snap a selfie with it, is there no good news about selfies that we can hear about these days? Mastercard has a remedy – by offering selfie maniacs pick up another habit, shopping, if these narcissistic folks do not indulge in that activity already. Basically, Mastercard might want you to snap selfies in order to verify that it is you when making a payment at a retail counter.

Mastercard is placing their hope that a selfie as a mode of payment will be smoother and more secure compared to a PIN number or a password. This app from Mastercard is set to be introduced Stateside as well as across the pond in the coming months, where users can choose the option to snap a selfie or scan their finger to process payments. In order to verify that the selfie is a selfie right there and then as opposed to a portrait photo to circumvent the “system”, the user will need to blink when snapping the photo.

Mastercard’s Chief Product Security Officer Ajay Bhalla is confident that such technology will be ubiquitous in half a decade’s time. After all,fingerprint ID is now a whole lot more commonplace than before, so why not selfies?

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: mastercard, selfie