It seems that some days; truth really is stranger than fiction.

Not too long ago, we wrote about hilarious Reddit conversations we found relating to money. Whilst a lot of them were based somewhat on reality; one would hope they were one-off instances of money madness; never to be repeated again. That’s not how it turned out for one of those crazy ideas on the list.

Somewhere (MasterCard HQ), somehow (via madness?), someone (that will be MasterCard) decided that the selfie would be the perfect way for already vain online shoppers to verify their payments by taking a brand new selfie.

Strike a Pose… and a Pout

Well, maybe not the pout because the selfie will be scanned for facial identification purposes in order to ensure it really is you, and the current you, not you in 2010 wearing something typically Britney Spears (ugh, what was I thinking?).

Despite how crazy it sounds, it might actually work. Unless of course an identity thief just happened to be a diabolically evil, identical twin in which case, you probably have much bigger problems than credit card fraud for a new ASOS dress.

It’s the Way of the Future

To be fair, the selfie isn’t the only new verification system being developed. The company will also look into providing fingerprint scanning if you’re camera shy. Both features will be rolled out by banking giants in the US, Canada, UK and some European countries (sorry Malaysia, not on the list yet but better keep practising on those selfies) in the next few months.

The feature will be made available via a special MasterCard app which you will need to download in order to use it. How it works is simple: in order to verify your purchase, you will need to either take a selfie or scan your fingerprint into the app. The revolutionary scanner is supposed to be able to detect the tell-tale blink that users are required to do in order to prove the selfie isn’t a previously taken one. I mean, considering the number of selfies some folk put out on social media – their credit cards would be raggedly used by now.

MasterCard announced it is also keen to explore other verification methods including retinal scans, heart beat monitors and voice recognition.

If you’re an avid online shopper, would you consider this the optimum way to pay? Hopefully, MasterCard’s facial recognition software is sensitive enough to recognise us in our just-out-bed-face as we make payments for those eBay auctions we sniped in the wee hours of the morning.

 

• TAGS:
• Biometrics
• Facial Identification
• Mastercard
• Verification Systems