Reuters is reporting that VeriSign and Mastercard have “announced a partnership on Wednesday they said would reduce the risk of online fraud for merchants.” Apparently this involves VeriSign’s payment gateway supporting MasterCards Universal Cardholder Authentication Field program. MasterCard’s press release is now available. Beth Cox also reports the story on InternetNews.com.
UCAF is a 32-byte field with a variable data structure that is useful to support any number of authentication approaches to cardholder identities, including: MasterCard’s Secure Payment Application (SPA), biometrics, digital certificates, smart cards and even mobile and pervasive devices support.
MasterCard’s UCAF infrastructure allows customer data to be transported between participating merchants, acquirers and issuers through a series of hidden fields. It offers an extra level of protection by allowing customers to type in personal identification numbers along with their credit card numbers and other personal information when buying goods online.