Give Retailers the Finger!

A new technology being offered by Pay by Touch allows retail customers to pay for products at the register by simply giving them the finger — or, more precisely, simply placing their finger on a scanner.

The new finger payment systems are beginning to show up in stores all across the country: at Piggly Wiggly grocery stores, Albertsons, Thriftway, Pick ‘n Save, and others.

Pay by Touch claims the scanners are actually safer than other common forms of payment, that customer information is kept encrypted and secured. Pay by Touch guarantees that customers are correctly identified by the unique biometric qualities of their finger.

Although many customers are quite happy with the new system, WTOC (Savannah, GA), reports that some customers are a bit leery of it due to concerns of identity fraud.

On the surface, this seems very similar to the key fob systems used at many gas pumps and convenient stores, where the customers simply waive their key fobs at the sensor to pay for goods and services. But by not requiring consumers to actually carry anything on them — just using their finger-prints — the system may appeal to a much larger group of consumers and gain a larger share of check-out transactions.

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