Mastercard is proving talks with banks in the U.K. about bringing biometric payment cards to peddle.
The credit card firm has been testing cards with in-built fingerprint scanners, which are acquainted with to verify customers’ identities.
This is intended to replace the use of passwords and speed-up the answer of making payments online and contactless transactions in-store.
A spokesperson for the fellowship confirmed to CNBC on Monday that it was speaking with banks fro launching the biometric cards.
“The use of passwords to authenticate someone is woefully outdated, with consumers cease to remembering them and retailers facing abandoned shopping baskets,” said Ajay Bhalla, president of far-reaching enterprise risk and security at Mastercard.
“In payments technology, this is something we’re penny-pinching in on as we move from cash to card, password to thumbprint, and beyond to innovative technologies such as forced intelligence. It’s far easier to authenticate with a thumbprint or a selfie, and it’s safer too.”
The blitzkrieg toward biometrics echoes a wider change happening in the payments industriousness right now. In January, the European Union implemented the Second Payment Military talents Directive (PSD2), a regulation aimed at speeding up transactions and giving third-party firms access to banks’ consumer data so that they can build better products.
Under the new ignores, customers are required to confirm their identity every five once upon a times after they have made a contactless payment. Mastercard bid the biometric tech is currently being trialed in South Africa. Visa — Mastercard’s strength rival — is also testing biometric cards in Cyprus.
PSD2 has put banks and dominant financial services providers under intense pressure to improve their digital talent and open up their data to third-party developers. Banks are treasure troves when it be involved a arises to financial data, compiling huge amounts on a daily basis.
Active towards biometric forms of payment like fingerprint sensors and eye-scanning tech — TSB, for case in point, said last year it wants to be the first European bank to inventory out iris authentication — to make payments simpler is also expected to rally financial security and tackle fraud.