Bank of Montreal (BMO) has teamed up with MasterCard to let Canadian and US corporate cardholders authenticate online payments with their fingerprints and selfies.
The phased introduction will initially see BMO employees scan their fingerprints or snap selfies to validate their identities to the MasterCard Identity Check app before being returned to merchant sites to complete purchases.
With the test phase being used to gauge biometrics' potential to increase security and convenience, the bank says that it plans to make the technology available more broadly during the summer.
Steve Pedersen, head, North American corporate card products, BMO Financial Group, says: "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."
MasterCard recently completed a six month pilot that saw 750 ABN Amro credit card users trial the technology in place of passwords, PINs and confirmation codes. More than three quarters of participants say that they want to continue using a fingerprint and/or facial recognition to complete payments and some nine out of 10 would like to replace their password with biometric identification definitively.