This ZDNet article declares that Visa has a vision that payments will be password free. What it doesn’t answer with any precision is how. Will Visa commit to FIDO? To decentralized Identifiers? To the principles of self-sovereign identity? Visa has partnered with a number of behavioral biometric suppliers to create Visa ID Intelligence, yet that particular technology also isn’t mentioned in this article:
“Visa believes the payment industry can move away from passwords in the next five years thanks to advancements in authentication and anti-fraud technologies that are already making “static” cardholder verification (CVM) methods such as signature and PINs optional.
With the ability of financial institutions and merchants to share 10 times more data with each other than ever before, and the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) that is making fraud detection faster and more accurate, Visa head of product Axel Boye-Moller believes that as this ecosystem evolves to be more secure, and AI and biometrics capabilities further mature, there is a future where legacy verification methods are eventually eliminated.
“Over the last few years as mobile technology has evolved, we’re seeing increasingly biometrics included in mobile hardware — that’s really starting to take off as more and more banks and other providers start rolling out mobile payment solutions,” Boye-Moller told ZDNet.
“But there’s still a lot of ground to cover. Passwords can be incredibly frustrating. You forget them and they can be stolen.”
Additionally, Boye-Moller said as more payments are conducted via a mobile device, it becomes “very fiddly” to enter a password on smaller devices.
Increasingly, he added, there has been an explosion in the amount of connected devices that are accompanied by more online accounts and subscription-based payment requirements.
“We think biometrics is absolutely a critical part of that solution — both convenient and secure,” he said.
“The way they rolled out [mobile payments] standards is that every single transaction that is done or adopted is biometrically authenticated with a fingerprint or facial recognition.”
While he said biometrics is part of the solution of moving to a password-free world, he believes it requires many other layers on top of that to drive more secure and convenient solutions.”
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payment Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
