Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

Amazon Patents “Pay-By-Selfie”

Amazon is the latest company looking to use selfies to authorise payments, according to a recent patent application.

Unlike other pay-by-selfie methods, such as that trialled by MasterCard, Amazon’s patent includes the use of video rather than just a static image, in order to authenticate your payment with an action, such as a smile or a wink. This is intended to increase the level of security, and reduces the chances of this system being conned by a static photo, but probably increases the chances of it going wrong, or you looking like a right berk as you pull a face in to a camera in a shop.

Of course, this being Amazon, they may use it to authorise payments at home, so you may be pulling a face in to your webcam.

You can view the full patent application on the US Patent & Trademark Office website (beware, this website features a design from the late nineties),

Via Techradar.

Exit mobile version