According to the Wall Street Journal, Visa and MasterCard have decided to upgrade their security systems that protect customer data. In two separate announcements, the two largest payment systems stated that they would expand tokenization and biometrics verification.
Visa plans to expand its Token Service, “which replaces cardholder information such as account numbers and expiration dates with a unique series of numbers that validates the customer’s identity, to device manufacturers beyond Apple.”
MasterCard plans on investing millions of dollars to develop a combination of biometrics, such as facial and voice recognition and fingerprint matching, to authenticate and verify transactions.”
The announcements were made following President Obama’s cybersecurity summit at Stanford University as well as at a time when “concerns over cybersecurity are growing as high-profile data breaches have hit nearly every corner of corporate America–from retailers like Target Corp., to Sony Pictures Entertainment, to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., to most recently health insurer Anthem Inc.”
The Wall Street Journal has the whole story.