Three Co-op stores in the Oxford area are allowing their
customers to pay for their food and other groceries by using
fingerprint readers.
Customers visiting the shops do not have to carry cash or credit
or debit cards.They have to register for the scheme via a Co-op
website, recording their payment details to allow goods later
purchased to be paid for automatically.
Tnhen they need to visit one of the shops to have a fingerprint
scanned to enable the system to work.
The three shops initially testing the scheme have fingerprint
reading machines at the tills. Sales assistants then ask customers
whether they would like to pay “by touch”.
Co-op is the first UK retailer to use customer fingerprints to
enable payments. A number of retailers in the US are already using
a similar fingerprint payment system.
There are doubts, however, that large numbers of UK retailers
will immediately adopt such a scheme, so soon after spending
millions adjusting their point-of-sale systems to use the chip and
pin payment system.
Some customers also will not be able to use a fingerprint
recognition system, their prints can be slightly altered by their
work.