Banks are looking for new ways to verify your identity when you’re using one of their credit cards.
Canadian bank BMO (BMO) announced earlier this week that it’s rolling out a new type of technology called Pay by Selfie. Developed by MasterCard, the technology places a biometric security layer on top of general credit card usage. When a card holder swipes his card during a transaction, he also takes a picture of himself and that photo is compared to an original photo the card holder took of himself when first signing up for the service. If it matches, boom — the transaction goes through.
Photo credit: d26b73 via Visual Hunt / CC BY
Banks understand their customers are concerned about security. In 2014 alone, over 1 billion personal records were illegally accessed and that number will certainly rise as hackers employ increasingly sophisticated schemes to get at customer and card data. In 2015, Vtech, the US prison system, and the FBI were all hacked in 2015. So, BMO strengthens its risk prevention with this particular technology rollout.
Steve Pedersen, head of North American corporate card products for BMO Financial Group, explained in a statement, “Mitigating the risk of fraud is always our top priority, and the inclusion of this technology is going to make payment authentication easier, and strengthen the security of the entire payments ecosystem.”
BMO is first introducing Pay by Selfie to its own employees so it can work out any kinks in the system before rolling it out more generally to the bank’s clients. In August of 2015, First Tech Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to trial MasterCard’s new technology. BMO and other FIs are increasingly experimenting with new technologies as the US enters an era where the responsibility for credit card fraud is shifting to stores and merchants. New EMV standards are spurring a technology upgrade cycle on the cards themselves as well as across the payments ecosystem, in general. Merchants and card providers who don’t follow the new regulations may see their write-offs for fraudulent transactions increase dramatically over the next couple of years.
