MasterCard Plans to Make Your Selfie Your Password
Nowadays, you can manage just about everything online — your mail, your social life and even your financial accounts. While online banking might be one of the greatest inventions of our age, logging in and keeping track of your password can be a huge PITA. The biggest concern when it comes to the Internet isn’t just forgetting your password (check out our tips on how to never forget a password again) it’s being safe on WiFi. What do you do when your password falls into the wrong hands? Thankfully, MasterCard has a plan that does away with passwords completely and is going to change everything — and yes, it involves the selfie.
On Monday, MasterCard announced that instead of inputting a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, their online banking will be accepting selfies. Yes, selfies. The reasoning behind such a move is pretty obvious, but it’s intended to stop people from stealing your identity, because in order to do so, they would literally need your face. Lucky for us, Face Off is still just a movie, guys. And not just any regular still photo will work either. Due to biometric technology, you actually have to blink during your selfie (which is more of a Live Photo selfie if you think about it) to prove it’s really you. Don’t worry, in case there’s some reason you can’t use your face, you can also access your account via fingerprint recognition.
Somewhere down the line, they may also be getting rid of signatures and PIN numbers when you’re making a purchase too. “We are now examining the possibilities to integrate our technology in the banking and tech giants’ apps to make payment using a selfie or fingerprint even easier,” says Arjan Bol, Country Manager MasterCard in Netherlands. Currently, the banking institution is piloting this new feature with Dutch participants only, but it’s a matter of time before they take this method of logging in global. In fact, summer of 2016 is when the U.S. will be getting this awesome feature.
So get ready for your close-up!
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(Photo via Getty)