Mastercard continues to discuss biometrics:
This is from an April 30, 1999, M2 Presswire:
"'Counterfeit and mail/telephone order fraud remain major areas of focus in 1999,' [Mastercard senior vice president for Security and Risk Management Joel] Lisker said. 'The increases we witnessed in 1998 were largely the result of skimming activity and the proliferation of technologies such as account generation programs. These attacks, when combined with the growth of electronic commerce, further demonstrate the need for migration from magnetic stripes to a chip-based biometric solution. MasterCard was able to minimize losses as the year progressed by promoting our best-in-class consulting services, increasing our investigative support, providing advanced statistical analysis, and increasing our transaction monitoring capabilities.'
. . .
"In 1999, MasterCard also expects to implement a real-world biometrics pilot program involving one or more innovative members. Since 1995, MasterCard has been studying the use of biometric technologies - which use unique physical characteristics to identify individuals. Among the most promising of these technologies is finger minutiae which, when extracted and converted into a unique algorithmically-derived value, can be stored and matched to cardholder characteristics stored on a chip embedded in the card.
"'MasterCard continues to lead the industry in development of new fraud-fighting tools, both for the immediate and short term and for the future,' added Lisker. 'Technologies such as Magneprint and neural networks, coupled with our consulting services, will help ensure the integrity of the magnetic stripe environment in the near term. In the longer term, MasterCard is committed to the global deployment of a chip-based authorization method, which could save the financial services industry billions of dollars.'"
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In 1998 Mastercard lost $526 million to fraud, up almost 14% over the 1997. The fingerprint minutiae mention (i.e., Identicator) is almost becoming boilerplate in Mastercard press releases. |
