MasterCard has rolled out facial recognition “selfie payments” across Europe, as privacy-centric cryptocurrencies push in the opposite direction towards anonymity. Beginning in 12 countries, MasterCard is employing Identity Check Mobile, a technology to allow customers to self-identify through facial recognition and fingerprints. An initial trial in the Netherlands revealed that over 75% of users surveyed indicated that they wished to continue using these methods of authentication, while 90% preferred to see biometric data used more in the future. This constitutes a shift away from conventional methods of authentication such as passwords towards widespread use of biometric data instead, reducing instances of fraud, yet at the same time decreasing privacy one step further. Cryptocurrency diverges from the financial establishment towards privacy While banks and financial institutions continue to move further away from privacy, cryptocurrency moves in the opposite direction. While Bitcoin offers wallets solely controllable by the user and pseudonymous transactions not tied to any physical identity, transactions across its public Blockchain can still be traced to a certain extent. Some cryptocurrencies have taken Bitcoin’s original offering a step further in the direction of true anonymity. Riccardo Spagni, the lead maintainer of the Monero project, a cryptocurrency which promises total anonymity, emphasizes the project’s commitment to improving privacy beyond even what Bitcoin has been able to offer: “Our focus on enhancing personal privacy remains unchanged, and we believe that threats to our privacy will become more and more prevalent. At the end of the day, you want to be able to make payments without the people you’re paying knowing your bank balance, and you definitely don’t want criminals to be able to figure out how much money you have access to or what your spending habits are. Of course, enhancing privacy comes at a cost, and I think that we’ll […]
