MyGlobalCity

Will That Be Cash, Charge, or Your Finger? March 29, 2006

The Chicago Tribune reports that Pay By Touch in the United States has outfitted Jewel-Osco supermarket/ drugstores in 14 states with a pay-by-touch system. To pay, you touch your finger to a tiny piece of glass, and supply a phone number.

According to the poll at the Chicago Tribune’s website, at the time of this writing, 71.1% of 671 respondents said that they were uncomfortable with such technology. Apparently customers surveyed at these stores felt similarly.

Interestingly, the technology does not store fingerprints. Rather, it converts features of your finger into an equation. According to Pay By Touch, that means that hackers, were they successful in accessing the server, would not have anything usable. So the technology uses a sort of one way authentication.

While the idea is brilliant - you don’t need a wallet - keep in mind that purchases made — by the 10,000 customers who have already signed up — are probably logged, and will later be data-mined for brand preferences, demographic trends, etc.

A spokesman from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) indicated that he felt the technology begged all kinds of questions about security and the usage of any collected data.

What I’m really wondering is whether I can borrow your finger for a pint of brew on Friday? That, and what happens when you have a blister? Now what do they think, as a promo campaign, of a some naked guy running around pointing his finger at things, ringing up a bill?

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