18/05/2022 14:05
Paying with your face or hands is the new reality promising Mastercard has launched a program that allows retailers to offer biometric payment methods, such as facial recognition and fingerprint scanning.
At the checkout, users will be able to authenticate the payment by showing their face or palm instead of swiping the card. The program is already active in five St Marche grocery stores in Sao Paulo, Brazil but Mastercard plans to roll it out globally by the end of the year.
How does it work? To sign up for the Mastercard service, you take a picture of your face or scan your fingerprint to register it with an app. This is done on the smartphone or at a payment terminal. You can then add a credit card, which is linked to the biometric data.
This is a technology similar to that pioneered by Amazon in the United States. Mastercard says it intends to bring the program to the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia at a later date.