Shopping with Biometrics for France & Germany.

In France the high-street bank ‘Accord’ has been granted permission by the French data Protection Authorities to start a six-month trial into the new biometric payment system. The bank, owned by ‘Auchan’ will offer the service to a number of its current account holders and biometric readers will be installed into a number of French ‘hypermarkets’. Customers start the process by registering their finger data securely with their bank. Once they have ended their shopping they simply touch the finger scanner at the check-out which confirms the buyer’s identity and they amount is then debited from their account. German supermarket Edeka has also been using biometric technology since 2007. (Source: www.connexionfrance.com) 

With this technology in place all over the world there would be no problems of lost payment cards, identity theft or fraud, cards being blocked when you’ve forgotten to warn your bank you are travelling abroad etc. Could biometric technology be the answer?

Could biometric technology could put an end to the frantic searching for keys whilst stood outside in the pouring rain? Could it be the answer to “Did I leave the door unlocked?” “Where did I leave my purse?” “How did I spend that much this month?”