Mastercard trials paying with your face

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STORY: You may not have to grab your wallet or phone to pay when you go to a check out in future.

That’s because Mastercard has rolled out a new way of paying a bill….and it’s with your face.

The U.S. finance giant’s Biometric Check Out Programme uses the same technology that already unlocks your phone.

Ajay Bhalla is President of Cyber and Intelligence at Mastercard.

“It's a cool new technology which allows consumers to pay with a smile, their face or just wave. So you can forget the clunkiness of taking your wallet out or your devices out, or cards out. Just do your shopping. You go to the checkout and just play with your face. It's as simple as that.”

The idea of biometric pay raises obvious privacy questions.

Mastercard said it had given apps a set of standards they must comply with to keep security and privacy safe.

The company also argued getting rid of passwords could make digital transactions safer.

But not everyone agrees we should share our biometric data.

Amos Toh is a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

“The uniqueness of our biometric identifiers presents unique harms. If they are being stolen as part of a data breach or if they are compromised in any other way it's very difficult to recover that biometric identifier and to safely protect it again.”

Mastercard said their first pilot would launch this week in Brazil with the Payface app.

The company said it’s also working on other similar projects.