Payments provider Mastercard has issued a deadline for the availability of biometric authentication across its cards, stating that all customers will be able to use fingerprints or facial recognition for verification by April 2019.

For that to work, banks that issue Mastercard-branded bank cards will also need to be able to support these verification methods. Mastercard said in a statement yesterday:

In practice it means that banks issuing Mastercard-branded cards will have to be able to offer biometric authentication for remote transactions, alongside existing PIN and password verification. It will also apply to all contactless transactions made at terminals with a mobile device.

For now, this deadline applies to banks and Mastercard supported services in the European Union, where both consumers and regulators have shown a clear preference for “strong authentication,” Mastercard said.

Read more at Mastercard, PYMNTs, and BankingTech.

To learn more about the latest developments in biometrics and identity verification, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to request an invitation.