In an age of identity theft and worn down magnetic strips we need a product that offers us greater reliability and security.
Not more than a week ago I was sitting in my Financial Consultant's office. We were discussing certain unimportant numbers, when I asked him a question to which he needed to refer to his computer. He turned to his computer which had fallen asleep, but instead of punching "Bosco" or "Swordfish" he simply placed his thumb against a small black scanner.
Then a few days later I noticed a friend had this same inexpensive contraption on his home computer. Why don't banks begin to tie our checking accounts to our thumb prints, to a point where we can slowly phase out the credit card? At a market simply place your thumb on the machine. Once you've gained access to your accounts a screen, much like what already exists in the grocery store, would give you the option of which acount to pay for.
Of course we do come across one slight problem; I believe that hackers would be able to steal digital thumbprints just as quickly as they could credit card numbers. A fail-safe in place could be additional codes sent seperately, or IP address confirmation when purchasing online.-- ColonelMuffins, May 02 2007 Pay-By-Touch http://www.jewelosc...&target=showPBTPage [batou, May 03 2007] The Jewel chain of grocery stores in the US baked this last year, see link.-- batou, May 03 2007 Wow. I need to start shopping at Albertsons.-- ColonelMuffins, May 03 2007 The finger print scanner on the pc scans the finger and compares to one or few pre stored finger prints which will not take a lot of the time. If you use the same method instead of a credit card you'll be causing a few mile long queue to buy a newspaper every morning while the system checks whose finger print is this. However, the NFC technology is here and is set to do just that but in a very different way, the Touch and Go way. have a look at WIMA 2007 http://www.wima.mc/-- hamadeh, May 03 2007 Didn't Marty McFly do this in Back to the Future 2?
I read that the directors and producers of that film are going to get together in 2015 and chat/laugh about how accurate/way off their vision of the future was to the reality of it. So, it looks lik thumbprints could be more widely used by 2015... not sure about the hoverboards though...-- imaginality, May 03 2007 Imagine carrying your credit card number on a pre-inked rubber stamp around your neck, and casually, without meaning to, leaving copies of your credit card number and expiration date everywhere you go. That's how secure your biometric data is. So, it'll have its place as a key into a customer database, but not as a secret key that protects access to something valuable - it's simply not secret.-- jutta, May 03 2007 random, halfbakery