Mastercard Brings Selfie Payments to Europe
Say cheese! Or at least hold still. Mastercard is rolling out its pay-by-selfie service in a dozen European countries.
The move follows a similar pilot in North America. As well, in March, BMO Financial Group and the payment card network launched selfie and fingerprint biometric corporate credit cards in the U.S. and Canada.
The European countries are: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The technology should reach other parts of the word next year, according to a report from Engadget. Consumers make purchases via facial recognition software.
In March, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba demonstrated its “Smile to Pay” service, which is similar to the MasterCard pilot, at a tech conference in Germany. American Express also reportedly is testing facial recognition to authenticate mobile transactions and late last month, Wells Fargo said it would pilot a program that uses a combination of voice and facial recognition to authenticate users of its online services portal for corporate and institutional customers.
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