By Jo Best
Story last modified Tue Feb 01 12:18:00 PST 2005
A supermarket has given its customers the choice of paying by
fingerprint at a store in the state of Washington -- and has found them
surprisingly willing to use the biometric system.
U.S. chain Thriftway introduced the system, which uses technology from
Pay By Touch , in its store in the Seattle area in 2002. It said it
now sees thousands of transactions a month using the payment method.
Once people have enrolled in the Pay By Touch system, they have their
fingerprint scanned as verification of identity at the checkout. They
then choose which credit card they want to pay the bill with, having
already registered the credit cards with the store.
Thriftway President Paul Kapioski said rather than shying away from
the technology because of concerns about protecting their privacy,
customer demand ensured that the biometric payment system made it past
the pilot stage.
http://news.com.com/2100-1029-5559074.html
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not understand one thing: If
people have already been verified as to their ability and
willingness to pay for their groceries through their credit card
and their personal identification has been verified in much the same
way by the credit card people, then *why* would people want to go one
step further by enrolling in 'Pay by Touch'? Is this intended as one
way to 'save them time' by not having to sign a credit card slip? In
other words, touch your thumb or finger somewhere rather than taking
a couple seconds to sign a slip of paper? Now, if the grocery people
had set up their own credit system *in place of Visa/MC* by using a
thumb/finger print, I can see where that might be useful, but
otherwise, why bother? PAT]
Monty Solomon (