Midcounties Co-operative is thought to be the first UK retailer to offer such a service, which is run by US company Pay by Touch. The system uses a finger scan to authorise electronic transaction from a customer’s account and also honours Co-op dividend points. Enrolment of fingertip data can be done online or at participating stores, where a set of 40 “unique” measurements are encrypted and stored at secure data centres.
“More than 2.3 million shoppers are already using Pay By Touch throughout the United States to make purchases, access frequent shopper programmes and cash cheques at more than 2,000 retail locations,” said John Rogers, founder and ceo of Pay By Touch.
But the UK’s payment clearing industry, APACS, is sceptical that fingerprinting systems will quickly become a mainstream payment security system, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper. “At the moment this is only in three shops, which means that it won’t be particularly convenient unless you need to shop there,” a spokesman is quoted.
APACS has just been instrumental in introducing the widespread use of chip and pin card authentication throughout the UK.