Forum Moderators: phranque
Once people have enrolled in the Pay By Touch system, they have their fingerprint scanned as verification of identity at the checkout. They then choose which credit card they want to pay the bill with, having already registered the credit cards with the store.
I have heard quite a few people talk about this becoming the next payment wave of the internet future, due to the fact that fraud is very difficult (which is also stated in this article).
How long do you think it will be before fingerprint/iris scanners become standard fare when buying a computer, or will it never happen?
I would have thought the later, but reading this article, I realized that this stuff is more mainstream than I thought. I can remember being a young teenager and marveling at the idea of never carrying cash and paying for everything with cards. Now, I (and many people I know) never carry cash. I pay for everything, from groceries to fast food to gas, with a card.
Will biometrics really be the next big thing on the web or will it flop?
Secure systems (think intranet) also run a match against a database.
Now think internet: think of the additional bandwidth, think of "big brother" database, think how (in)secure many such databases are, think personal privacy concerns, think various country social and regulation concerns ...
I think it will be some time. The great UK ID card experiment is well worth following: if it succeeds such biometric id will swiftly spread everywhere, if it stumbles or crashes so will biometrics over the internet.
