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Tue 15 Mar, 2005 08:29 am
Quote:BERLIN (Reuters) - Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out, saving the time spent scrabbling for coins or cards.
An Edeka store in the southwest German town of Ruelzheim has piloted the technology since November and now the company plans to equip its stores across the region.
"All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop straight away," said store manager Roland Fitterer.
The scanner compares the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details.
Edeka bosses said they were confident the system could not be abused.
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I love it! I am sick and tired of walking around with credit cards that can be lost or stolen, and weigh heavily in my pocket. I think that fingerprint technology is the wave of the future. I really hope that American business becomes involved in this.
I know that it is done here already. I have a pass to Busch Gardens, where they use fingerprint technology. In that way they can check that I am not giving my pass to someone else. I think that it is not only convenient, but an important tool for ferreting out terrorists.
What do YOU think about fingerprint technology? Do you like it, and would you use it if it were available?
there was a fingerprint scanner at my office when i started, but there were problems with it.
sometimes when it scanned you, it thought you were someone else...
they scrapped it after about a year and switched to "flex" cards, which have unique barcodes.
no problems since...
RP- Couldn't the flex cards be stolen, and used by someone else?
Biometrics is coming hard-on now - soon it will be tied in with a national ID system
if you have someone else's card you can only flex that person in or out...
looking forward to the retina-scans and embedded chips...
Region Philbis wrote: looking forward to the retina-scans and embedded chips...
I'm not looking forward to it as I just see it as losing personal privacy.
Hell the big companies cannot even keep the info they have safe right now - case in point = choicepoint and bankofamerica (2 hot ones)
When I read this the first thing that popped into my mind was "Brandon Mayfield".
You may recall that Mayfield was the guy arrested for involvement in the Madrid train bombing based on fingerprints.
If the FBI can make such huge mistakes I'm not sure I'm willing to trust Safeway.
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