The key to the future of digital commerce? You.

Over decades of technological advancement, commerce has changed dramatically. Shoppers and merchants are now often continents apart, and the sums of money that can be digitally moved dwarf what would pass from one side of a shop counter to the other.

In the evolution from cash-only commerce to our increasingly digital global marketplace, verification has taken many forms — all of them, in a way, moving closer and closer to you as you.

From card numbers to behaviors

Card numbers have long stood in for individuals in the payments ecosystem.

The thing is, card numbers don’t prove that you’re you — they just prove that someone, somewhere, possesses a string of numbers.

And so verification, particularly in fraud detection, evolved to scrutinize behaviors associated with credentials. For instance, if you’re not a gambler, a modern fraud detection system recognizes that a big bet at the racetrack probably wasn’t you and stops that transaction from going through in the first place.

It’s a vast improvement — and a layer of behavior on top of credentials helps fraud detecting tools get a whole lot closer to buyer identity than numbers alone.

More than card numbers or behaviors

Even so, humans are far more than the sum of our transactions and credentials.

We are spontaneous.

We can be indecisive.

We are occasionally impulsive.

We do all sorts of things that defy our past purchasing patterns.

But some things are uniquely you. Your face, your fingerprint, your biometrics are yours and yours alone.

And they’re the key to the next generation of security in payments.

The key to the future of commerce? You.

Today, Digital identity is about recognizing what makes you uniquely you, wherever you go in the commerce experience.

Enter Visa Payment Passkey Service, a new take on digital payments identity — one that creates a more streamlined and secure experience wherever you shop online.

Visa Payment Passkey Service binds your account credential with your device, enabling you to use the biometrics you use to unlock your device for payment authentication. Enroll once via checkout (or your mobile banking app, in the future) and then pay with a smile, everywhere Visa is accepted online, across any device or online surface. No need to worry about passcodes or authenticator apps for each checkout experience.

Under the hood, we’ve built our own Fast Identity Online (FIDO) server, enabling Visa to authenticate and verify customer identities. Where other approaches require the issuer or merchant to complete at least part of their own authentication, Visa’s federated model shoulders that entire burden. If you’re a merchant, just integrate Visa Payment Passkey Service once and let Visa handle the rest—no need to build your own server, integrate it into your tech stack, or get issuers onboard.  

At the end of the day, relying on biometric markers for payments helps make the whole chain more convenient and more secure. More and more, the future of commerce has you at the center.

Learn more about Visa Security.