MasterCard plans to launch new biometric technology for verifying customer identities during online shopping transactions in the coming weeks with merchants and banks. The company has been testing facial and fingerprint recognition software, called Identity Check, in the Netherlands, Canada and the U.S., as a way to combat growing online fraud.

As Visa and MasterCard have pushed merchants and consumers to switch from credit cards that use magnetic strips to cards embedded with a computer chip that creates a unique code for each transaction, retail fraud patterns have shifted. For the 33% of MasterCard merchants that have adopted chip technology, fraud from counterfeit cards has dropped by 54%, said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise security solutions at MasterCard. Criminals have regrouped to focus on internet transactions, where no physical card is used.

Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.