Mastercard biometric payment cards leader Bob Reany to head NuData Security

Biometric payments security expert Bob Reany is taking over leadership of NuData Security, replacing CEO Christopher Bailey at the Mastercard subsidiary. Reany will lead NuData’s strategy to meet future online security and customer experience challenges with innovative user verification solutions.

NuData’s priorities under Reany’s guidance include leveraging the EMV protocol, passive biometrics technologies and connected devices for holistic online security and enhance a broad range of user experiences.

Reany moves over from Mastercard Executive Vice President of Identity Solutions to the position of executive vice president of Digital Devices & IoT at Mastercard and head of NuData, though the announcement does not explicitly state his title with the analytics company.

“The exciting opportunity is to work with this growing team to help deliver world-class security while supporting best-in-class user experiences for in-person transactions, ecommerce, IoT and every part of an individual’s digital life,” said Bob Reany.

In the past eight years as EVP of Identity Solutions, Reany has played a central part in the development of biometric payment cards. He explained the payments industry’s struggle to make use of the advanced biometrics technologies as they emerged to Biometric Update in late-2017. The company had closed the NuData acquisition months earlier, at least in part to do just that.

He also declared in conversation with Biometric Update as part of a deep-dive early last year that “(t)he ones that can get their costs down are the ones that are going to win” in the fingerprint biometric payment card market. With Mastercard supplying contactless biometric bank cards powered by Gemalto for issuance by NatWest in trials of both debit and credit cards, and a card powered by Thales and Fingerprint Cards biometric technologies certified by Mastercard earlier this year, Reany will pivot to the challenges of ID in the online space.

Bailey is a co-founder of NuData, and had served as Chief Technology Officer before taking on the CEO role halfway through last year.

Article Topics

appointments  |  behavioral biometrics  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  identity verification  |  Mastercard  |  NuData Security