LIVE FROM MONEY 2020 EUROPE, COPENHAGEN: Using a smartphone to authenticate identity for mobile payments has gone like “wildfire” in recent trials in the US and Netherlands, said Ann Cairns, MasterCard’s president, international markets.

The practice, sometimes dubbed as ‘selfie security’, is an area of fintech innovation that Cairns finds most exciting. “We are starting to see authentication happening in a fun or interesting way,” she said.

There has been a trend for pushing biometrics as a form of authentication, with facial, iris or fingerprint being the favoured approaches. However, evidence to date has been scarce on user perception on switching away from traditional passwords.

Although brief, Cairns’ comment indicates MasterCard might be encouraged by the take-up of biometrics. Her comments echo those of Morpho CEO Anne Bouverot at February’s Mobile World Congress.

Asked during a fireside chat about other innovation she sees as exciting, Cairns picked out the integration of mobile payments into the Internet of Things (IoT), the idea being that transactions occur in the background as users go about everyday tasks.

Interestingly, arch rival Visa announced at Mobile World Congress that it was extending its Visa Ready programme to the IoT market, meaning that vendors of a variety of devices including wearables, vehicles, consumer appliances and clothing will be able to embed payments capability in their products.

Widespread deployment of payments in this way is some years away, but Cairns pointed out how far we have come already with commuters, for instance in London, with users paying for journeys on contactless cards.

“Travellers from anywhere in the world with debit or credit cards can use the London Underground. We see 35 different currencies every day being used. Things like that make a city great to move around.”