There has been a spate of hacking events across corporate networks in the U.S., and one of the primary victims of such hacking events are credit card users. Many times, credit card numbers are stolen and are sold in the underground market for anywhere between $25 and $100 per number. Sadly, such events have become too common, and this has put credit card users in a vulnerable position. Besides hacking, many credit cards are stolen every year, and this adds to the woes of credit card users.

To prevent the victimization of users, MasterCard (News - Alert) has come up with a new security mechanism. It has introduced fingerprint scanning to make it more secure for customers to use their cards at Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals. Prior to this fingerprint scanning feature, MasterCard had employed other contactless payment options including allowing users to simply tap their card at checkout. However, these options were unable to prevent thieves from misusing cards. To overcome these security concerns, MasterCard's fingerprinting feature may be the solution.

MasterCard has partnered with a company called Zwipe to create the first credit card that combines biometric authentication and the existing contactless payment technology. In fact, this biometric authentication is built into Zwipe's MasterCard, and this technology replaces the traditional method of entering PIN number for authentication. With this feature, only the users who have been issued the credit card can use it as fingerprints are unique to each individual.

This new security feature by MasterCard is expected to bring down the incidence of stolen credit cards and hacking events that have in the past affected millions of credit card users. This feature is also likely to be the first step towards providing a more secure digital network to protect customers.