Visa Looks to Biometric Authentication with New LATAM and Caribbean Partnership

“We want Visa cardholders to feel absolutely confident that their funds and personal data are safe whenever and wherever they use their Visa cards.” – Alessandro Chiarini, CEO, Fortress Identity

Delaware-based Fortress Identity has announced a new partnership with Visa that will see the company’s technology used to protect Visa cardholders in Latin America and the Caribbean.

With the company having just signed an agreement with Visa’s Latin America and the Caribbean division, it’s still a bit murky regarding what the collaboration will look like in detail. But in its broad strokes, Fortress Identity says it will involve the use of its voiceprint technology as well as “active and passive biometrics and phone codes” for cardholder authentication, according to a statement. The company said its solutions will be in play “at every stage, from point-of-sale through online transactions.”

Other partners involved in the collaboration include payment platform provider YellowPepper, Banking-as-a-Service platform provider NovoPayment, and EMV vendor HST.

Commenting further on the development, Eduardo Perez, Visa Latin America and the Caribbean’s Risk Officer and VP, gestured generally to the need for strong authentication security in today’s payments environment. “Multi-factor user authentication is critical in today’s interconnected commerce space, and verifying the identity of people attempting to access the network is key to reducing many types of fraud, including chargebacks,” he said.

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May 31, 2019 – by Alex Perala