Retail giant Amazon may soon allow you to authorize your transactions using a selfie that you need to click when asked for.
Earlier, we had written about MasterCard’s selfie-payment service that lets you authenticate your transactions by clicking a selfie. Similar to those lines, Amazon has also plans of introducing selfie-pay when you shop online with the retailer.
This move comes in an effort to reduce online payment fraud. Once you register your card details with Amazon, shopping for items and checking them out was a one-click process where you just select the card and you’re down. Amazon feels that if anyone manages to get access to an Amazon account, they may misuse the card on file and go on a purchase spree. But, by using selfie-pay to authorize your transaction, the retail giant can be sure that it is indeed you who is purchasing all the items.

Another secure aspect of this facial-recognition technology is that it reduces the possibility of hackers trying to access your keystrokes when, say, you’re in a mobile device. By reducing the usability of entering text or numbers to a minimum, Amazon is trying to ensure the online safety of its buyers.
An even better usage for this technology is that it prevents kids from making unsolicited purchases from their parent’s account. For example, a kid may accidentally check-out an unwanted item and pay for it using your card (because of the easy option) and using selfie-pay could avoid that possibility altogether. Now, don’t think it doesn’t happen. Kids are very tech-savvy these days and it could easily happen.
It seems like selfies will not only fuel our self-obsession but also act as a secure way to authorize our online transactions and actually become more useful than fuelling narcissism.
*Image Courtesy: Mashable