British supermarket offers 'finger vein' payment in worldwide first
British supermarket offers 'finger vein' payment in
worldwide first
By Katie Morley, consumer affairs editor 20 SEPTEMBER
2017 • 1:04AM
A UK supermarket has become the first in the world to let
shoppers pay for groceries using just the veins in their fingertips.
Customers at the Costcutter store, at Brunel University
in London, can now pay using their unique vein pattern to identify themselves.
The firm behind the technology, Sthaler, has said it is
in "serious talks" with other major UK supermarkets to adopt hi-tech
finger vein scanners at pay points across thousands of stores.
It works by using infrared to scan people's finger veins
and then links this unique biometric map to their bank cards. Customers’ bank
details are then stored with payment provider Worldpay, in the same way you can
store your card details when shopping online. Shoppers can then turn up to the
supermarket with nothing on them but their own hands and use it to make
payments in just three seconds.
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It comes as previous studies have found fingerprint
recognition, used widely on mobile phones, is vulnerable to being hacked and
can be copied even from finger smears left on phone screens.
But Sthaler, the firm behind the technology, claims vein
technology is the most secure biometric identification method as it cannot be
copied or stolen.
Shaler said dozens of students were already using the
system and it expected 3,000 students out of 13,000 to have signed up by
November.
Finger print payments are already used widely at cash
points in Poland, Turkey and Japan.
Vein scanners are also used as a way of accessing
high-security UK police buildings and authorising internal trading at least one
major British investment bank.
The firm is also in discussions with nightclubs, gyms
about using the technology to verify membership and even Premier League
football clubs to check people have the right access to VIP hospitality areas.
The technology uses an infrared light to create a
detailed map of the vein pattern in your finger. It requires the person to be
alive, meaning in the unlikely event a criminal hacks off someone’s finger, it
would not work. Sthaler said it take just one minute to sign up to the system
initially and, after that, it takes just seconds to place your finger in a
scanner each time you reach the supermarket checkout.
Simon Binns, commercial director of Sthaler, told the
Daily Telegraph: ‘This makes payments so much easier for customers.
"They don’t need to carry cash or cards. They don’t
need to remember a pin number. You just bring yourself. This is the safest form
of biometrics. There are no known incidences where this security has been
breached.
"When you put your finger in the scanner it checks
you are alive, it checks for a pulse, it checks for haemoglobin. ‘Your vein
pattern is secure because it is kept on a database in an encrypted form, as
binary numbers. No card details are stored with the retailer or ourselves, it
is held with Worldpay, in the same way it is when you buy online."
Nick Telford-Reed, director of technology innovation at
Worldpay UK, said: "In our view, finger vein technology has a number of
advantages over fingerprint. This deployment of Fingopay in Costcutter branches
demonstrates how consumers increasingly want to see their payment methods
secure and simple."
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