Mastercard Invests in AI-Based Startup Trust Stamp

The startup is working on an online, offline identity solution.

Electronic payments giant Mastercard has made a strategic investment in Trust Stamp, an Artificial Intelligence-based authentication services company.

Announced on Thursday, the amount involved in the investment deal was not disclosed in the public domain.

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Trust Stamp is a graduate of the 2018 Mastercard Start Path accelerator program and is headquartered in the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The two companies first collaborated to develop a secure non-PII authentication network for both online and offline environments at the June 2019 ID4Africa conference in Johannesburg.

Commenting on the investment, Gareth N. Genner, chief executive of Trust Stamp, said: “Our initial work with Mastercard has been focused upon enhancing privacy and data security in environments with low connectivity, and we have been impressed by the breadth and depth of Mastercard’s commitment to that space.”

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“The programs currently being developed have the potential to improve the lives of communities around the world and we are proud to be a key component of the underlying technology.”

A secure identity platform

Founded in 2015, Trust Stamp is developing presentation-attack detection tools to biometric and other identity data to create a proprietary non-PII Evergreen Hash using advanced cryptographic techniques and Artificial Intelligence.

Meanwhile, the payments giant is intensely getting involved in modern technologies including AI and blockchain. It was a part of the Facebook-led Libra Association but pulled out from the consortium to save itself from regulatory backlash.

The company also tied with R3 last year to develop a blockchain-based cross-border payments system.

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