Fingerprint Shopping

There’s been a discussion over at NO2ID about the idea of fingerprint technology being used for shopping.

Supermarket customers are being offered the chance to pay for their shopping by using a fingerprint.Three Co-op stores in the Oxford area are offering the service, which is said to be the first of its kind in Europe.

It means shoppers do not need to carry cash or cards to the supermarket and need not remember chip-and-pin numbers.

“Pay and Touch” allows customers to have a finger scan linked to their bank details so payment for goods can be taken directly from accounts.

While there is talk about wanting to monitor progress, the general reaction seems to be pretty balanced.

My own reaction is similar. If people want to use this system, well, so be it, I don’t have a problem. Just so long as it never becomes a mandatory requirement, that is. When asked to provide a thumbprint the other year on paying for petrol with a credit card, I politely refused and that was the end of the matter. If people want to take part and hand over their finger or thumb prints, that’s up to them.

The problem here, though, is twofold.

Firstly, there is the “softening up” effect. The idea that giving this information becomes so commonplace that when the home office demands it (as opposed to offering consumer choice) people will just shrug and run their fingers over the scanner. Frankly, I place more trust in a private company looking after such data than I do a government department. Not least, system failures for a private business will hit them sharply in the profit region and that concentrates the mind somewhat.

The second concern I have; at the moment anyway; is that of reliability. I have fingerprint recognition on my iPAQ. I don’t use it. After locking myself out and having to do a hard reboot and subsequent restoration of backups, I really don’t trust it. It is, frankly, next to useless – no matter how slowly I swipe my finger over the reader. When I really, really need access to the data, I can’t be sure that the thing will recognise my print and let me in. In such a circumstance, the likelihood of me having access to my computer and therefore my backups is invariably going to be zero or close to it. Anyway, a PDA is supposed to be a quick and easy way of accessing ones data. If you have to struggle with the technology, it is counterproductive. The technology would have to be close to 100% before I was prepared to take the risk. Otherwise, we would have to have our backup with us at all times, thereby negating the purported benefits.

That said, even with reliable technology, I would still probably decline. Handing over a credit card and tapping in a number is no hardship. Swiping my finger across a reader offers nothing sufficient in the way of benefits to make me want to switch.