Visa moves to kill PINs by pushing Aussie banks towards biometric authentication

Consumers will soon be able to forget about PINs and frustratingly long 16-digit card numbers when shopping online and in the real world, as Visa moves to make Australian banks build infrastructure and put in place policies to empower biometrically-authenticated transactions.

A new Visa security roadmap outlines a four-year process for Australian banks to adopt new standards for e-commerce transactions, designed to streamline the purchasing process and reduce fraud, while implementing new information-sharing practices and tokenisation technology.

Visa Asia-Pacific senior vice-president Joe Cunningham told The Australian Financial Review it aimed to make the purchasing process simpler and quicker for shoppers, while also making it more secure.

“What we want to get to is this totally fluid, on-bound experience,” he said.

“You’re on a journey on the train, or at the airport, and you’re browsing and see something interesting on the web and you want to perform a transaction to buy it, or gift it … no one wants to remember the 16-digit card number and type it in … You will be able to use your fingerprint, that’s embedded in the Visa checkout experience, or the merchant’s online service.”

He said the authentication process would be “fully embedded”, in the same way that Uber has removed the need for drivers and customers to conduct any transaction between them, due to both being authenticated earlier in the process.

As well as online transactions, Mr Cunningham said Visa’s standards also supported fingerprint scans being used for face-to-face transactions.

“Today and into the future people expect to be able to use their phones as an alternative to cards and so long as it’s a contactless device, they will simply be able to use their fingerprint as authentication,” he said.

“Sometimes you won’t even need a fingerprint, you will have the control, but transactions over $100 will need it as authentication.”

The Australian roadmap forms part of a global push by Visa to urge the financial services sector to embrace its version of innovation in a secure way.

To read more about biometric authentication, please click on the link below…

Source: Visa moves to kill PINs by pushing Aussie banks towards biometric authentication | afr.com