Mastercard

The move follows a research, which showed that the Dutch prefer fingerprints and facial recognition authentication to passwords for online shopping authentication.

A recently completed six month pilot found that 750 ABN Amro credit card users ditch pin codes, passwords or confirmation codes and instead pay online via fingerprint and facial recognition.

About 75% of users are convinced that biometric payments will reduce fraud.

The Dutch participants of the initial global test by MasterCard and International Card Services (ICS) revealed that customers are mostly positive about the use of biometric payments.

Of the surveyed, 95% of the fingerprint users and 80% of the facial recognition users suggest that the use of biometric authentication made their shopping more convenient.

MasterCard Netherlands country manager Arjan Bol said: "We are now examining the possibilities to integrate our technology in the banking and tech giants’ apps to make payment using a selfie or fingerprint even easier."

The company plans to launch this technology in the US, Canada and parts of Europe in the summer of 2016.

ICS risk management manager André Ijbema said: "People forget passwords, making the payment process unnecessary long and complex so we expect that passwords will slowly become obsolete in favor of a more user friendly alternative, such as biometrical identification."


Image: MasterCard at MWC 2016 Booth. Photo: courtesy of MasterCard.