Your fingerprints may soon replace credit cards*

November 27th, 2007 - 1:08 pm ICT

London, November 27 (ANI): Are you afraid that using a credit card for
shopping may make you a victim of an ID fraud? Well, now a new
technology based on personalised fingerprints is here to address your
worries.

With the revolutionary new system, which is being introduced in Europe,
it will be possible to buy a product by paying through fingerprints.

The so called digiPROOF fingerprint payment system is already very
popular in Germany.

To pay for the product purchased, a customer will have to press his/her
finger or thumb on to a scanner at the till, which acts as a register of
customers prints and their bank details. The total will then be deducted
from the customers account.

Toby Wolff who shops at the Edeka supermarket in Rulzheim, South West
Germany, twice or thrice a week describes the system as quick as a flash.

“I always use digiPROOF. It’s good because it’s so fast, and you don’t
have to bring your wallet with you,” the Mirror quoted the 22-year-old
graphic designer as saying.

In Germany, the technology is popular even amongst old people.

“Older people like it better than young people. Sometimes when they get
older, they get shortsighted and it can be embarrassing to fumble around
for their coins at the till or peer at their credit cards,” said Werner
Schneider, store manager at the luxurious department store, Wagener Gallery.

“We introduced the system two years ago and we now have 6,000 customers
using it out of a total of 15,000 regulars. It’s good for the customer
as it’s faster and it’s good for us because people who sign up tend to
be more loyal shoppers,” Schneider added.

The system is also being used in school canteens, where parents pay into
an account and can limit their child’s daily lunch allowance.

The person behind digiPROOF is Ulrich Kipper, chief executive of
technology company It-Werke.

According to Kipper, the new system may provide a solution to the
current panic about ID fraud.

“Stealing from people’s credit cards would be yesterday’s news with this
technology. It would mean the end to credit card fraud. Every time you
use a card, you are putting your details out there. But with digiPROOF,
you register details once into a secure database,” said Ulrich.

Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, and several companies in Saudi Arabia
have shown interest in using the digiPROOF fingerprint system.

It just takes a few minutes for a customer to sing up to digiPROOF. All
one has to do is to fill a form, and swipe an identification proof like
a passport and a bank card, and scan once dabs. The registration process
completed about five minutes thereafter.

Sion Roberts, director of consumer industries and retail at global
technology company EDS, said: “Customers are most concerned with queues,
so anything that can be done to speed up a transaction is appealing.

He added: “The other idea is that, if it’s in school canteens, the
technology can be used to send parents a report detailing what their
child has been eating that week, which may help in fighting childhood
obesity.”

Roberts, however, admitted that the digiPROOF fingerprint system might
have two major drawbacks.

“Some people might be concerned about putting their driving licence
number or passport number on to the database, so there might be a bit of
work to do with privacy. Retailers have also just spent a lot on rolling
out chip and PIN, and might not be so keen to pay for another new
system,” he said.