And finally…pout and pay is here

Shoppers will soon be able to verify online payments by taking photos of themselves with a new “Selfie Pay” app on their smartphone.

The development comes after Mastercard announced the European roll-out this week of its ‘Identity Check Mobile’, a new payment technology app that uses biometrics like fingerprints or facial recognition to verify a cardholder’s identity online.

The technology is being introduced across 12 markets in Europe, including the UK, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, following a series of successful trials in the Netherlands, the U.S., and Canada.

MasterCard customers who download the identity check app and use the company’s facial recognition software to verify their identity will have to blink when prompted to prevent scammers holding up photographs of people whose card details they have stolen.

MasterCard said nine out of ten people involved in pilot schemes preferred it to passwords.

“We want to identify people for who they are, not what they remember,” said Mastercard’s president of security Ajay Bhalla.

The app is available in Europe now and will be rolled out across the rest of the world in phases in 2017 but cardholders won’t be able to pay by selfie until MasterCard forms partnerships with banks.

Jonathan Sander, of security firm Lieberman Software, said: “Nicknaming it Selfie Pay is genius because it’s skipping right past technology to a concept most users will immediately understand … It’s much harder to steal someone’s face than to guess their password. Users can’t forget their face like a password, or use an insecure face because they’re lazy.”

HSBC is also trialling selfie verification technology.