Amazon applies for "pay by selfie" patent

Amazon just filed a patent for tech that would allow shoppers to make a purchase by taking a photo of themselves.

Facial recognition authentication is a lot safer than current authentication methods. That's why banks and other institutions want to use it to authenticate users.

"In the face of ever increasing amounts of fraud, and huge caches of stolen usernames and passwords, organizations are looking to turn users into their own passwords," says Damien Hugoo of Easy Solutions, a fraud protection service provider. "Biometric authentication methods, whether it's touch, voice, or facial recognition, combine frictionless access with a high level of accuracy to strike the right balance between convenience and security."

Customers rely on their unique physical features to protect their accounts and safeguard transactions. There's also an 'ease-of-use' factor for customers. No more trying to make out a fuzzy set of numbers in a CAPTCHA block.

With facial recognition, technology measures and records various points on a human face. The user just takes a selfie on their mobile device in order to authenticate access to any channel. This technology is already being adopted by financial institutions, as well as other verticals becoming increasingly concerned about the validity of users logging on to their sites.

So what's to prevent fraudsters from using a photo from social media? The proposed Amazon system will ask users to do something specific, such as blink or wink, actions "that cannot be replicated with a two-dimensional image," the patent says.

The patent mentions other types of electronic devices aside from phones and tablets, including personal data assistants. It's likely an Alexa-compatible device will one day have a camera, making the next gen Echo or home robot the perfect shopping machine ...

... if robots are actually going to destroy civilization, that's probably how it'll happen.