MasterCard is rolling out a new strategy in the fight against credit card fraud: It wants you to pay for things with your face.
At the Mobile World Congress tech show in Barcelona this week, the credit card company unveiled its new “selfie pay” feature, which will allow cardholders to use an image of their face or a fingerprint to verify their identity when making payments online.
.@MasterCard is launching selfie payments https://t.co/jd71s9e4vp pic.twitter.com/LhCv6h3B0q
— CNNMoney (@CNNMoney) February 23, 2016
To use selfie pay, cardholders will have to download MasterCard’s app to their mobile device or tablet. Customers will still need to provide their credit card details to make purchases, but if further authentication is required, they can hold their device up to their face and take a photograph or use the device’s fingerprint sensor.
To prevent fraudsters from abusing the service, MasterCard said users will have to blink to prove they’re not holding a photograph up to the camera. The company said it also has algorithms in place that can detect if someone is using a previously-filmed video.
MasterCard plans on rolling out the feature in the coming months in several countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and parts of Europe.
The move came after a series of successful pilot tests last year. MasterCard told the BBC that 92 percent of its test subjects “preferred the new system to passwords.”
“I think the whole biometric space is a great way of protecting yourself when you are doing payments,” Ann Cairns, head of international markets for MasterCard, told CNBC. “There are a whole range of biometrics that say ‘I’m me, I'm making a payment’ and it just makes the whole thing more secure.”
According to The Verge, MasterCard is currently looking into other biometric security options beyond facial recognition and fingerprint scans. Specifically, the company is considering using sensors to read a person’s electrocardiogram -- the unique electrical signal produced by his or her heart.
“While even fingerprint or facial recognition requires input from the user, heartbeat recognition can take place seamlessly in the background,” The Verge explained. “You just wear a bracelet and it sends a signal to devices you're near to prove you're you.”
To prevent identity theft and fraud, many banks and companies are turning to biometrics to amp up security mechanisms. The Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba recently introduced its own “selfie pay” feature while British bank HSBC announced new security measures this week that allow customers to authenticate their identity with a fingerprint or voice command.
“The problem with online payments has always been that the card doesn't need to be present, hence the credit card companies have charged more for the transactions to cover the costs of fraud,” Windsor Holden, head of forecasting at the U.K. tech consultancy Juniper Research, told the BBC. “If they can introduce a mechanism that makes the system more secure than merely asking for a password, then the hope would be that fraud levels decrease and the savings can be passed back onto merchants, and perhaps consumers too.”
Still, experts have warned that even biometric authentication measures like facial and fingerprint scans aren't foolproof. Privacy is also a concern.
If the most popular personal finance personality in the United States had a chance to save Americans billions of dollars a year, would he? Apparently not.
On Monday, Dave Ramsey came out against a rule being reviewed by the Obama administration that would require financial advisors to act in the best interest of their clients who are saving for retirement. The fiduciary rule, as it is known, was proposed last year and would apply to 401(K)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs).
Ramsey -- a personal finance guru who has written six New York Times bestsellers and has a talk-radio show that draws over 8 million listeners, behind only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity -- said in a tweet that the rule would keep a wide swath of the population from getting personal investing advice.
This Obama rule will kill the Middle Class and below ability to access personal advice. https://t.co/Eym2Jq5CUP
— Dave Ramsey (@DaveRamsey) February 22, 2016
Current law allows financial advisors to work on commission when they advise savers about retirement accounts. Advisors are also allowed to earn money from mutual fund companies for steering clients to specific funds, even if those funds are not in the client’s best interest.
Such conflicted advice costs retirement savers $17 billion a year in poor investment performance and unnecessary fees, according to a White House estimate. Financial research firm Morningstar puts the cost to retirement savers slightly higher, at $19 billion.
The finance industry has continually argued that the fiduciary rule would restrict access to information from advisors and raise costs for customers. But it's important to remember that the only advice the rule would restrict is potentially conflicted advice. In addition, the advisor of a commission account has an incentive to push the client to buy and sell often, which often drives up the cost for the saver -- the fiduciary rule would restrict advisors from telling clients to buy just to generate commissions.
So why is Dave Ramsey, who preaches a financial code based on cost-cutting and ethical behavior, standing up for a business model that costs Americans billions of dollars a year?
It might be because he makes money steering his listeners and readers to a network of financial advisors, called endorsed local providers, who can work on commission, said Helaine Olen, a personal finance author who writes an advice column for Slate.
“Ramsey’s entire business model is that he claims you can get 12 percent returns in the market, and he has a network of endorsed local providers who pay him for referrals,” Olen told The Huffington Post.
Since Ramsey doesn’t disclose his company’s financial details, it’s hard to know exactly how much money is at stake for him, but Olen thinks the fiduciary rule might take a toll on Ramsey's referral business, and it certainly will not be good for endorsed providers who work on commission.
Ramsey's office did not respond to requests for comment.
While Olen notes that “not everyone who works on commission is doing something with bad intent,” the current system has created a "standard where everybody is on their own and people have to figure out if they are getting advice that is in their best interest. And that’s sort of absurd, right?”
In the past, Ramsey has used his syndicated advice column to tell followers to quit jobs that require them to sell financial products they don’t believe in. A reader once asked if she should keep a part-time job that required her to push credit cards on customers. (Ramsey abhors debt and the questioner shared that view.)
Ramsey’s advice: Quit, “for the sake of your own integrity.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Ramsey's radio show airs weekly. It airs five days a week.
Bill Gates on Tuesday called for "new inventions" in energy storage to make generating power from solar and wind more economical.
In a blog post accompanying his annual letter, the Microsoft founder said storing energy in lithium-ion batteries for use when the sun has set or the air is still costs triple the average kilowatt-hour of electricity in the United States.
"This is why we need new inventions that improve our ability to store energy cheaply and efficiently," Gates wrote. "Getting them will make it even easier for solar and wind to be a big part of our zero-carbon future."
He explained:
This figure is based on the capital cost of a lithium-ion battery amortized over the useful life of the battery. For example, a battery that costs $150 per kilowatt-hour of capacity with a life cycle of 500 charges would, over its lifetime, cost $150 / 500, or $0.30 per kilowatt-hour.
So if a consumer tried to store enough electricity in this lithium-ion battery to run her house, she would be paying at least $0.30 per kilowatt-hour for the battery.
According to the EIA, the average price of electricity for consumers in the United States is around $0.10 per kilowatt-hour. The European Union, where prices average 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, and India, where they range from 2 to 15 cents, would see similarly dramatic increases.
The problem is twofold. The way electricity is priced in the United States provides poor incentives for storing excess solar and wind energy, and batteries are expensive.
Electricity is more expensive during the day, when solar panels generate energy, and cheaper at night. Utility companies will buy consumers' excess solar generated during peak hours and recirculate it into the power grid, then sell it back at a cheaper night rate, when solar panels aren’t producing energy.
Therefore, there's little incentive for people to use solar-storage batteries that hang onto energy during the day if they could be selling it at peak prices to the utility companies and buying it back later on the cheap.
That remains a problem in most states.
But Gates is wrong to harp on the high costs of energy storage technology, according to Matt Roberts, executive director of the trade group Energy Storage Association.
"There's sort of this perception that costs need to come down for something to happen," Roberts told The Huffington Post by phone on Tuesday. "This cost focus is a bit of a red herring. What we need to see out there is more value focus."
For businesses, the long-term benefits are clear. The historic climate accord reached in Paris last year provides a framework for building a low-carbon economy, and it signals to companies that renewable energy will be a smart investment right now, even if the tangible benefits won't show for another few years.
The costs of storing energy are likely to decrease by 50 percent in the next five years, according to Roberts. That makes sense. Electric automaker Tesla, which released two storage batteries last year, is building a $5 billion manufacturing plant in Nevada called the Gigafactory, which at its peak is projected to produce more lithium-ion batteries in a day than were produced in the entire world in 2013.
Roberts said Gates would better serve the renewable energy movement by highlighting the positive outlook for energy storage instead of noting obstacles that are already in decline.
"Those costs are still coming down," he said. "But the big thing that unlocks this is value."
Corporate wellness programs seem like a no-brainer in theory. In order to get employees to exercise more, companies can just pay them to reach a certain number of steps walked or calories burned. Right?
Not quite, suggests a new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Rather than rewarding employees with cash or perks for achieving a fitness goal, employers might consider first giving out money and then gradually taking it away from those who fail to reach their goals.
The idea of losing money for not exercising may help motivate workers, according to the study, published earlier this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“We know that people are irrational, and that they respond more to loss than gains,” Mitesh Patel, one of the researchers, told HuffPost. “People want to avoid the feeling of losing something they feel they already have. That can be very motivating."
The researchers enlisted a group of 281 slightly overweight adults and instructed them to walk 7,000 steps a day. One group of participants was paid $1.40 each day they hit the goal; another was entered into a lottery to win $5 or $50 if they completed the 7,000 steps; a third group received $42 at the beginning of the month, with $1.40 deducted each day the goal was not achieved. A control group received only feedback on their exercise and no money.
The monetary incentives were offered for 13 weeks. During that time, the group whose money could be taken away actually performed better than the others -- which surprised the researchers. They also didn't expect to see such similar results between the people who got paid to exercise and the ones who didn't get paid at all.
Participants in the penalization group hit the 7,000 steps on 45 percent of the days. Those who had the possibility of a reward achieved it just 35 percent of the time, and those in the lottery group did so 36 percent of the time. The people who only got feedback hit the goal on 30 percent of the days.
As an interesting note, the participants in the loss incentive group never actually earned the $42 upfront. The researchers paid everyone with a check at the end of the month. The money used during the study was all deducted from an imaginary account, proving that just the psychological fear of losing money is pretty strong.
The researchers hope that the data will help companies develop more effective ways of getting their employees to exercise. Standard wellness programs usually take the reward approach, like offering to supplement gym memberships or giving prizes for reaching weight or blood pressure goals. But if penalizing employees makes them a little more eager to work out, why not try that?
“If we’re going to use incentives, we should think about how it’s designed and incorporate behavioral economics,” Patel said.
Nearly half of U.S. companies have adopted wellness programs, many of which hinge on outcome-based goals like losing weight or decreasing cholesterol levels. Their actual effectiveness is contested: Some studies argue that they don’t significantly improve health.
Not to mention, when employers start emphasizing the need for workers to take better care of themselves, some worry that the burden of the health care costs get shifted onto those who are less healthy and that the programs will violate employee privacy. In 2014, CVS was sued by one of its employees for allegedly making her disclose her weight and sexual activity under a health screening program or pay $600 a year if she declined.
And while incentivizing workers to get healthy has good intentions, the fundamental message that a company conveys should be that it’s encouraging a culture of healthy behavior. No one wants to be overworked, stressed and, on top of all that, penalized for not having taken enough steps in one day. That’s pretty discouraging -- and won’t solve problems either.
Privacy advocates are showing their support for Apple CEO Tim Cook's decision to resist FBI demands, which would require the company to create software that would bypass iPhone encryption.
The bureau requested a court order to access a phone belonging to one of the attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December. It has asked Apple to create a backdoor, or software that would be able to circumvent passcodes on an iPhone, in order to see the attacker's data.
But privacy experts, along with the CEO of fellow tech giant Google, have sided with Cook, who published an open letter on Wednesday lambasting the "unprecedented" demand, saying it would "undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers" and prove catastrophic in the wrong hands.
The internet security nonprofit Fight For The Future organized a protest on Wednesday, which saw a few dozen advocates gather outside Apple's flagship store in San Francisco. The group is planning dozens of events around the country next Tuesday to fight what Greer warns could become a dangerous precedent.
"This is being falsely framed as a debate between privacy and security," said Fight For The Future campaign director Evan Greer. "The reality is that encryption is security and undermining it is insecurity."
The White House has denied asking Apple for a backdoor. Press secretary Josh Earnest said the Justice Department "is simply asking for something that would have an impact on this one device." But privacy advocates called the FBI's request a patently illegal demand that could give them free reign over the public's data.
Credit: Fight For The FutureDozens of protestors stand in solidarity with Apple outside the company's flagship store in San Francisco.
"They're not just asking Apple to unlock one phone, they're asking them to build software to circumvent their own security," Greer said. "You'd destroy one of the most important security features of the iPhone -- once it's built, it doesn't just go away."
Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, echoed Greer's comments in an interview with PBS' Gwen Ifill and noted that the FBI likely already has the information they'd want to garner from the iPhone in question.
"They chose this case because they want precedent that they can order a company to design a particular feature at their whim," he said, noting no court has ever approved an order this broad.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai publicly backed Cook, writing on Twitter that the FBI's demand could compromise users' privacy, adding that it could set "a troubling precedent."
1/5 Important post by @tim_cook. Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy
— sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) February 17, 2016
4/5 But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent
— sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) February 17, 2016
"We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders," Pichai said. "But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices [and] data."
The FBI has said it has been unable to unlock the device, an iPhone 5c, in the months following the attack.
Apple has complied with government requests before, and The Daily Beast notes the tech giant has aided authorities at least 70 times since 2008. But the company increased encryption safeguards beginning with its iOS 8 and later versions, saying at the time it wouldn't be able to comply with requests to pull data any longer.
Greer warned that if Apple were to comply with such a demand, a precedent would be established that could put people in danger -- especially those in marginalized communities.
"This is actually about people's safety," she said. "Secure phones keep people safe. Breaking those phones puts people in danger."
Also on HuffPost:
Jaw-Dropping Apple Stores Around The World
Jaw-Dropping Apple Stores Around The World
Share1of11Fifth Avenue, New York CityFrom the outside, this Apple Store, located in Manhattan's GM Plaza, looks like a giant glass cube. Inside, a spiral staircase takes customers to an underground store. It opened in 2006.
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Seth Wenig/AP PhotoFifth Avenue, New York CityFrom the outside, this Apple Store, located in Manhattan's GM Plaza, looks like a giant glass cube. Inside, a spiral staircase takes customers to an underground store. It opened in 2006.Seth Wenig/AP PhotoimageRegent Street, London, EnglandThis location opened in 2004 in an Edwardian Period building that once housed the Thomas Cook Travel Agency. The bright lights inside the store offer a warm contrast to the dreary, grey English weather outside. In 2015, the store temporarily closed to undergo renovations that would let in more natural light from outside.Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images imageGrand Central Terminal, New York CityThe Apple Store inside Grand Central opened in 2011. It is situated on the terminal's east and northeast balconies, which overlook the bustling main concourse of the station.Mario Tama via Getty ImagesimageWest Lake, Hangzhou, ChinaThis location opened its doors in 2015. At the time, it was the largest Apple Store in Asia. It's located on West Lake, or Xihu, a historic body of water that has inspired artists for centuries. Apple's minimalist store here boasts ceilings almost 50 feet high and has no visible support columns. The vertical panels in its glass façade reach from the ground to the ceiling with no interruptions, and the interior's second level appears to float freely over the ground floor.AppleimageInternational Financial Center, Shanghai, ChinaThis store, which opened in 2010, features the now-iconic glass cylindrical structure for which Apple won a patent in 2013. The cylinder houses a glass spiral staircase leading down to the retail floor and is meant to create an "ethereal feeling." Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty ImagesimageCentral district, Hong KongHong Kong's first Apple Store opened its doors in 2011. The space connects two wings of the International Financial Center shopping mall and features a glass spiral staircase. There's even an area designed specially for kids.AppleimageCarrousel du Louvre, Paris, FranceWhen it opened in 2009, this was France's first Apple Store. Sitting in an underground shopping mall beneath the historic Louvre Museum, its entrance faces the iconic Inverted Pyramid skylight. Thibault Camus/AP PhotoimageKufurstendamm Avenue, Berlin, GermanyA renovated, century-old theater building houses this store, which opened its doors in 2013. It features a classical Greek revival façade with Ionic columns and tall windows. As an homage to the building's history, the top floors sport red-carpeted stairs, chandeliers and a theater for concerts.AppleimageTaikoo Li Sanlitun, Beijing, ChinaThis store opened in 2012 in Sanlitun, a popular outdoor shopping mall designed to be an urban open space that employs a variety of shapes and textures. The Apple Store has a glass façade that spans three sides of the building, and the company's logo is projected on a block that sits astride the store and another building in the mall. AppleimageWangfujing district, Beijing, ChinaThis Apple Store opened in 2012. The surrounding area is an outdoor food and night market that has been around for over 800 years. The store boasts Asia's first three-story glass spiral staircase and has two 360-degree Genius Bars, according to The Next Web.Feng Li/Getty ImagesimageUpper East Side, New York CityLocated in a 1920s beaux-arts building that used to be a bank, this Apple Store opened in 2015. It features an old bank vault that's been remodeled into an Apple Watch Edition fitting room, where VIP shoppers can try on the gold device. Apple also restored the outside of the building to look like it did in the '20s.Mark Lennihan/APimage
