Pay+By+Touch

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//image from// [|//http://blog.scifi.com/tech//]

__Pay By Touch, The One-Touch Checkout__
==**To keep up with a fast-paced and evolving world, technology needs to advance to meet the standards of people and society. Pay By Touch is a company that uses a unique biometric system, fingerprints, to enhance payment transactions.**==


 * Overview**

Pay By Touch is a service that is currently available in Singapore, United Kingdom, and the United States. It is a free service that has recently been implemented in many grocery stores and a few retail stores. This service allows for purchases to be paid by placing your finger on the Pay By Touch sensor at the checkout point. Your fingerprint image is linked to your account that has previously been set up and retrieves all the necessary information in that way and therefore eliminates the need for carrying cash or card.


 * History**

Smart Touch was a company that was created in 1994 by a group of Californian entrepreneurs and technical visionaries. For the next five years, they developed systems and secured patents for tokenless biometric payments and in 2000, after renaming themselves “Indivos” completed pilots that were implemented in local California retailers. A merger between Solidus Networks, which focused on streamlining authentication and payment processing, and Indivos was completed in July of 2003 and the new alliance was named Pay By Touch.


 * How Pay By Touch Works**

Pay By Touch relies on biometric technology that uses the image of a fingerprint to identify people by their physical traits. Customers give their fingerprints when they enroll into the program, along with payment information, and this image is then converted to approximately forty unique points of the finger which are then put into the computer with “military-level encryption,” says John Morris, president of Pay By Touch. When the customer touches the scanner, it recognizes the unique points to link them to their account and payment information.

//image from [|www.paybytouch.com]//

No cash, cheques, or credit cards need to be carried.


 * Security**

Pay By Touch hopes to be the next technology that, like the magnetic stripe of credit cards, will revolutionize the payment system. But the issue of security remains and concerns many people who come across this system. Your fingerprint is unique and can only be accessed by your print alone. The company reassures their customers that Pay By Touch is very safe and fraudsters would not be able to reverse-engineer the unique points back into fingerprints because it would be impossible to match the points of the image to the finger of the owner. In addition, when used alongside PIN numbers and passwords, it becomes harder to steal someone else’s identity. How safe the information is depends on how companies retrieves and maintains it, according to Anil Jain, a Michigan State University computer science professor. Pay By Touch discards the fingerprint after it has been made into an image of unique points and hence is very careful in the preliminary process.


 * Benefits**

Pay By Touch is fast and easy since it avoids the hassles of writing cheques, digging for cash, swiping cards, or even carrying a wallet at all. It also avoids the need to show ID when purchasing age-restricted items. According to their company, it’s transactions are twice as fast as a cash payment, three times as fast as a credit card and four times as fast as a cheque.


 * An Example**

In May of 2002, West Seattle Thriftway Grocery Store adapted the new technology. Customers were waiting outside when the store opened to enroll in the new concept of biometrics. Paul Kapioski, who is the owner of the store implemented the service because of the time and money it would save. The system is expected to speed up the checkout times and also save money that is normally spent on credit card fees. Credit cards are approximately $1.10 per swipe and since about 70% of his customers pay by credit, it was worthwhile to try out Pay By Touch.


 * Competition**

A rival technology is contactless credit cards, which like Pay By Touch, is trying to gain acceptance in the lives of consumers. The advantages of contactless cards however, is that banks normally just mail them to their existing customers whereas enrollment is required for Pay By Touch. Contactless credit cards are like, “advanced, general-use versions of the Speedpass device ExxonMobil introduced in the late 1990s that lets customers pay for gas with a tap of a keychain wand” explains Curtis Arnold of CardRatings.com. There is a microchip in the card that passes the information to the electronic reader through radio-frequency waves which processes it.


 * Innovations**

Recently, Pay By Touch announced the launch of Pay By Touch Online, which uses the same concept as a payment and identification service, but to make purchases on the Internet. They stress that a certified sensor or scanner must be used to give a fast, easy and secure process.


 * Conclusion**

Pay By Touch is a concept that appeals to today’s society because of its convenience and speed. It’s all about getting things done quickly and in the most efficient way possible. But the downfall is that convenience does come with a price, if a credit card is stolen, it is replaceable. But with a fingerprint, a finger is a different story.


 * REFERENCES**


 * Pay By Touch** - [|www.paybytouch.com]
 * USA Today** - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-12-01-cash-credit-finger_x.htm
 * Seattle Pi** - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/68789_finger02.asp
 * PR News Wire** - http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-06-2006/0004275205&EDATE=