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Biometrics In the 1980s, Admiral Kirk used retinal recognition to access information about
hot at Project Genesis in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. He also engaged the starship
Money20/20 USS Enterprise in an auto-destruction sequence via voice authentication in Star
Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Peggy Bekavac Olson Hollywood has regularly used biometrics-related special effects to fuel our
Strategic Marketing imaginations. Think about the antics of James Bond, Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne,
the X-Men, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Maxwell Smart, The Terminator, The X-Men
M oney20/20, held in and Captain America. Tom Cruise's Minority Report character John Anderton
October in Las Vegas, especially creeped me out when he underwent a risky eye transplant to avoid
is known as the world's the city-wide optical recognition system.
largest payments and Today, Mastercard seems to be leading the pack with several biometric pilots.
fintech event of the year. More than It rolled out a pay-by-selfie service in a dozen European countries following
20 keynote speeches and 100 panel a similar pilot in North America. And in March 2016, it launched selfie and
sessions organized by subject tracks fingerprint biometric corporate credit cards in the United States and Canada
provided a plethora of learning with BMO Financial Group.
opportunities this year. Plus, nearly An authentication primer
300 vendors were on hand exhibiting From a tech security standpoint, authentication is the process of determining
their wares. whether someone is, in fact, who he or she claims to be in order to prevent
data compromise and theft. In the payments arena, authentication provides a
Having attended the conference the barrier, thus combating fraud.
past few years and learned about the Cardholder authentication comes in many forms. Store sales clerks are tasked
mobile explosion and bitcoin/block- with visually inspecting cards to see if they appear to be legitimate. Clerks
chain innovation, I was eager to ex-
plore this year's latest technology is- 23
sues and advances.

Right away, I was fascinated by the
attention given to authentication, es-
pecially in the area of biometrics. The
number of vendors in the exhibit hall
touting finger, hand, face, retina, iris,
ECG (heartbeat) and voice recogni-
tion technologies, and more, was sur-
prising. So was talk about biometric
authentication innovation in many
panel sessions. Since I love spy, sci-
ence fiction, action, adventure and
fantasy genres, the hubbub around
biometrics made me giddy.

My introduction to biometrics, as
well as the technology's potential for
misuse, was as a child watching the
Mission: Impossible television series
during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The secret agents of the Impossible
Missions Force were adept at faking
fingerprints to gain access to locked
or restricted rooms, safes and just
about anything else. They also em-
ployed lifelike prosthetic masks as
undercover disguises to trick unsus-
pecting family, friends and business
associates, as well as defeat facial rec-
ognition surveillance.