bmetzler's Journal: Fingerprint Payments!!

Well, I'm fairly excited about this news:

Cub Foods on Monday began testing a biometric payment system at its Blaine store that can access checking accounts by scanning a shopper's finger.

Called Pay By Touch, Cub executives said the technology will allow customers to purchase groceries faster and eliminate the need to carry checkbooks or debit cards.

"This is about offering shoppers the best customer service," said Trish Belisle, retail technology manager for Supervalu Inc., which owns and franchises Cub grocery stores.

Yes, this is good news indeed. Now I just need to figure out how to get up to Blaine, and hope that they roll this out to all stores ASAP.

Spiffy

[slothdog]

Sounds like a couple of gas stations [ksl.com] around here are doing the same thing. Ah, technology.

I can't wait!

[bryanthompson]

I finally did the self-checkout thing for the first time, which was exciting. I don't think I'd ever make it as a checker, or whatever you call them, because It took like 5 passes before I could get the reader to figure out the barcodes.

I think it's funny, though... they store all kinds of info on our credit/debit cards, yet they can't store our language preference somewhere. WTF is that about?!

Re:I can't wait!

[Bill Dog]

The bad thing about the self-checkout'er-thingies-whatever, at least the ones I've used, is that I couldn't give it change. So if my bill came out to $5.01, I couldn't give it a fiver and a penny, I had to give it a five and a one and get back 20 lbs of metal to carry around in my pocket.

Re:I can't wait!

[bryanthompson]

The one I went to had a coin slot, but since I never carry cash I just used the debit card.

I bet all of that change coming out attracted a lot of attention. You should've started jumping up and down "I won, I won!' :)

I'm going to sound crazy here...

[Bill Dog]

But that's okay, this is Slashdot, so we're more than used to it.

As a Christian this is good news for me and like-minded, if this means I don't have to accept a mark on my body to engage in daily commerce -- I can hardly be faulted for a "mark" that I already have.

This is a debit card type system, and I don't use those, because they're too directly-connected to my bank account for my tastes. I used to use my atm card at grocery stores, before debit cards came into being, and once the checker double-charge

Biometric authentication in a grocery store, eh?

[dexterpexter]

So I suppose you wouldn't want me to send them the paper I recently (well, about eight months ago, actually) wrote on biometrics, then? hehe. It turned into one big penetration testing presentation. haha.

If anyone uses these, please let me know about your experiences. I am genuinely interested.

My favorite part of the article:
"Cub Foods said it will not sell or release the information to any outside party, including the police." Oh really? That is one powerful grocery store.