The international payment circuits have decided to collaborate in order to bring an end to the use of the much-despised password. MasterCard has revealed its strategies that, thanks to a collaboration with Visa, will make life easier for those who want to make online acquisitions.
Currently, the user identification services that have been activated areMasterCard SecureCode and Verified by Visa, which use the 3D Secureprotocol that has been introduced by Visa to stem fraud in online transactions. As many of us have already experienced, it is necessary for the user to insert a specific password in a pop-up window, a step that is required to authorize the payment and finalize the acquisition. A solution that is not particularly fluid and immediate in terms of user experience.
As recent statistics predict, by 2018 online acquisitions via mobile devices will represent 30% of sales on the online market, thus the two companies could not do anything but prepare new security standards for an era that is set to move beyond the PC. The new authentication standards, which the MasterCard/Visa collaboration turned out to be decisive in defining them, can be considered a sort of 3D Secure 2.0. It will be implemented in 2015 and will completely substitute the current system. Acquisitions will be easier and without interruptions due to passwords. If it is ever eventually necessary for an identification to be verified, users can identify themselves with a one-time password or through static biometric identification that has been memorized.
This is yet another confirmation by international circuits that e-commerce will continue to be ever more mobile and that the user experience must be facilitated through a guarantee of speed and simplicity. In fact, Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise security solutions, declared: “We want a payment experience that is safe as well as simple… We want to identify people for who they are, not what they remember. We have too many passwords to remember and this creates extra problems for consumers and businesses”.
