TheMiloBox

Paying by fingerprint at the supermarket

Customers of a German supermarket as well as many U.S. retailers will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out.An Edeka store in the southwest German town of Ruelzheim has piloted the technology since November, cutting out on time otherwise wasted scrabbling for coins or cards.

Paying with your fingerprint
many companies plan to equip it's stores with the new technology.

Retailers say : "All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop right away".

The technology is based on comparing the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details. Some retailers say that they were confident the system could not be abused. The chance of two people having the same fingerprint is about one in 220 million.

Yet, the security of the systems largely remains a question mark. Security and privacy experts worry that pay-by-fingerprint schemes could lead to hard-to-combat identity fraud and greater threats to civil rights.

"What are their security practices and how much more extraordinary are they compared to a ChoicePoint, a LexisNexis, or a CardSystems?" said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. ChoicePoint, Reed Elsevier's LexisNexis, and CardSystems Solutions have all had high-profile incidents where consumers' financial and personal data has been leaked.

"Stealing a credit card number is one thing," she said. "But if your biometric is stolen and can be reconstituted, then that is a big problem."

Both Pay By Touch and BioPay pledged that their customers' security and privacy are of paramount importance.

Both companies require customers to physically enroll and link their fingerprint and customer ID number to one or more financial accounts. Social Security numbers are not used and accounts are only identified by the last few digits of the account number. The merchant never sees any of the information and nothing is left behind, said Donita Prakash, vice president of marketing for Herndon, Virginia-based BioPay.

"It is the least amount of information left behind about you for any of the possible ways of completing a transaction," Prakash said. "Nothing physical passes to the merchant that could be skimmed, and it's not leaving your body."

Moreover, neither system uses the actual fingerprint to identify the user, but creates a template of the fingerprint--generally a set of numbers measuring specific features of the print. The data format reduces transmission time, but also makes it impossible to reconstitute the original fingerprint, said Larry Hollowood, chief security officer for Pay By Touch.

So what are your views of this adaptation of technology? People are still weary. In a world of an ever growing case of identity theft. Will this change things? or just cause other crimes to evolve.. Are you willing to let just anybody have access to your finger print?