Mastercard invests in online and offline identity startup Trust Stamp

Mastercard has made a strategic investment in AI-generated identity authentication company Trust Stamp.

Trust Stamp is a graduate of the 2018 Mastercard Start Path accelerator programme. The two companies introduced their first collaboration with a secure non-PII authentication network for both online and offline environments at the June 2019 ID4Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Trust Stamp's technology maps biometric identity data which is translated into a proprietary hash, which can then be used to analyse and attach trust or preference to business interactions.

Trust Stamp CEO, Gareth N. Genner says the initial work with Mastercard has been focused upon enhancing privacy and data security in environments with low connectivity.

Shashi Raghunandan, Mastercard's senior vice president for humanitarian and development programmer. says: "This is part of our commitment to make the digital economy work for everyone, everywhere. Trust Stamp's AI-powered technologies help us to provide our development sector partners with robust authentication solutions."

The size of the investment was undisclosed.