MasterCard Launches The First Ever Selfie Payments App

Over the last couple of years, there has been an unprecedented growth in FinTech industry and new payment methods have been developed, making the process fast, secure and more streamlined than ever before. Mastercard has recently introduced one such method with the launch of its new payments app called ‘Selfie Pay.’ The app makes use of facial biometrics in order to verify user identity and validate the payments. The App is called Selfie Pay as it asks the users to confirm their identity by taking selfies or showing their face to the front camera of their Smartphones. There have been several not-so-successful biometrics payment apps where thumb impression was needed to validate payments. But Selfie Pay is the first facial recognition app of its kind. Nevertheless, the app also supports fingerprint biometrics. So you can easily choose from the two methods whether you want to authenticate using facial recognition or fingerprint scanning.

The ‘Selfie Pay’ app is initially launched in Europe and is currently live in 12 European countries including Norway, Sweden, Spain, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, UK, Denmark, Netherlands and Czech Republic. The company says that soon the app will be available in other countries as well and the initial trials will begin the following year. The company believes that this new technology will help us move away from all the conventional payment methods especially the password verification. The biometrics authentication will also reduce the fraud cases as the users need to prove their identity before proceeding any further.

Also read Apple Pay vs Android Pay Pros And Cons At A Glance.

Apple Pay Offers A Similar Way

Well not exactly like MasterCard’s ‘Selfie Pay’ app but Apple Pay do offers a similar way to validate mobile payments. In Apple Pay, you can do so by creating a touch ID on your iPhone and once you are done with that, you can always pay by scanning your fingerprint or giving your thumb impression. But there’s no way to pay by taking selfies via facial facial recognition methods. Furthermore, there are instances when the touch ID doesn’t work in iPhones especially when you don’t place your finger properly over the home button. That’s the reason why the iPhone users still prefer tap and pay method instead of the fingerprint scanning.

Getting Started With ‘Selfie Pay’

When you first install the ‘Selfie Pay’ app on your smartphone, you need to prove your identity by taking a selfie and sending it to the server. In this way, you’ll provide your facial biometrics to the company and these biometrics will be further used for authenticating the payments that you use in future. The app will also ask you to blink while you’re taking the selfie. In this way, it makes sure that it’s really you and not someone else holding your photograph in front of the camera.

However, one trivial setback of biometric-based authentication is that you can’t change it once the biometrics are set while the passwords can be changed any time.      

Oodles Technologies is an Offshore Mobile app development company with an extensive experience in creating dynamic mobile applications for Android and iOS platforms. Our team of mobile app developers work on latest technologies in accordance to the client’s requirement with a sole aim to deliver best in class services to our client.