Buy with Your Eyes: Biometrics and AI Combat Payment Fraud 

In June 2024, Mastercard, alongside fintech startup PayEye and retailer Empik launched a pilot program in Poland that allows customers to biometric payment using iris and facial recognition.  

Users can sign up with PayEye via its mobile app, then, a quick biometric and fingerprint payment technology scan completes the sale without the need for a traditional card swipe or PIN. 

Matthew Driver, executive vice-president at Mastercard for Asia-Pacific, highlighted that biometrics are designed to be safer, adding another layer of security. He revealed that Mastercard biometric payments has invested US$7 billion in cybersecurity and AI over the past five years as part of its initiative to fight credit cards fraud, estimated to cost billions annually worldwide. 

 “We collaborate with diverse industries and sectors on the creation of security standards that will ensure ongoing confidence in the ecosystem,” Driver said, while emphasizing that biometric ways of executing a payment are equally secure as well as privacy centric.  

The program also includes stringent data protection rules for all participating banks, merchants, and biometric fingerprint payment system technology providers. 

Data Science for Fraud Detection by Mastercard 

Mastercard, aside from using biometric payment, harnesses AI in fraud prevention. The payment giant has partnered in 2023 with major UK banks to deploy an AI-powered system, Consumer Fraud Risk (CFR), that can forecast and prevent fraud in a biometric based payment system in real-time. 

CFR evaluates every transaction request for possible risk based on data points across the Mastercard network-a view that no individual financial institution could have.  

“Mastercard operates at the network level to identify patterns in push-payment requests and transaction data, enabling banks to stop suspicious transactions before they are completed,” explained Driver. 

Since its launch at the beginning of 2023, CFR has been deployed across 11 UK banks and has collectively seen a 12% drop in authorized push payment fraud from £389 million to £341 million.  

Authorized push payment (APP) fraud often sees customers tricked into sending payments to fraudsters, and Driver said Mastercard’s system has attracted interest from global financial bodies and law enforcement agencies because it can catch such transactions in milliseconds. 

Building a Safer Digital Landscape of Biometric Payment 

Apart from this type of biometric payment and real-time fraud detection, biometric payment market Mastercard also introduced the Payment Passkey Service, a tokenization-based method that is supposed to keep consumer information safer.  

Tokenization replaces sensitive information about biometric payment solutions with unique tokens, rendering any stolen data useless to hackers. Driver said that tokenization is not merely an additional layer atop of traditional encryption, rather, an essential component as the volume of online transactions continues to mushroom. 

Driver emphasized that Mastercard that “securing the digital ecosystem is a team sport,” he said, with collaboration on every level key, from the telecommunications sector to social media. In this regard, by further developing its biometric and AI-powered solutions, Mastercard works toward establishing a more secure and fraud-resistant payments environment for customers across the globe. 

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