Selfies will soon be passwords for mobile banking

What��s worse than too many selfies? Too many passwords.

MasterCard says it’s rolling out a new feature this summer that will accept selfie photos as an alternative to passwords for verifying mobile payments.

MasterCard says users of selfie pay will be asked to blink into their phone cameras to verify they aren’t simply holding up a photo. Owners of the latest iPhone 6 and 6s also will be able to use a fingerprint as an alternative form of verification.

“Consumers hate passwords,” said Ajay Bhalla, chief of MasterCard’s safety and security division. He added that “the most commonly used password is 123456, so they are not secure.”

To make matters worse, people often use the same password for multiple sites, further widening the exposure to hackers, Bhalla noted.

With the new selfie tech, Mastercard is looking to reduce rejections of legitimate transactions, which cost the credit-card giant an estimated $118 billion each year — 13 times more than the cost of actual fraud.

MasterCard, which made its announcement Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, joins other big firms including Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in experimenting with facial recognition technology.

Last week, HSBC announced it will soon begin using voice-recognition and fingerprint technology to help its banking customers access their money.