Customers to pay for shopping with a fingerprint at the Co-op

[emad]

Customers to pay for shopping with a fingerprint at the Co-op
By Nina Goswami
(Filed: 23/10/2005)

For those who often reach the tills only to discover they have left their bank cards on the kitchen table, it could be a godsend. On the other hand, the latest way to pay for the shopping has uncomfortable overtones of helping the police with their inquiries.

The system, which is intended to replace cash, plastic and cheque books with a customer's fingerprint, is about to appear in Co-op supermarkets in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. If it is as successful in the Co-op as it has been in American Pay By Touch grocery stores, the chain will roll it out across the country.


The technology was designed three years ago in San Francisco and is operating in more than 1,000 stores across America. Some grocers said that more than 75 per cent of their customers have joined the scheme, which has resulted in "dramatic reductions" in fraud and checkout queues.

Tom Fischer, the vice-president of Pay By Touch Europe, explained that America's widespread use of finger payments is down to shopper enthusiasm. "Simplicity, security and speed are what consumers are after," said Mr Fischer. "The amount of plastic Brits are expected to carry is becoming burdensome, so what we've done is to obviate the need for a card at all."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/23/ncoop23.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/23/ixhome.html

[mr blur]

1. Just one word:

Appalling. Speaking as one who uses cash for everything. And don't use "loyalty" cards. Nobody's business what I spend my money on.

[sweetheart]

2. so they know my fingerprints in real-time

But banks can't pay money from a current account in to their credit
card account in less than 3 days. Hmmm. Something stinks.

The public's gotta catch on to the banking delayed-payment scam some
day and demand some realism from computers that do everyting in
microseconds.