Brunel first in UK for fingertip shopping
A Brunel supermarket is the first store in the UK to introduce fingertip payment - and hundreds of students are already using it.
This brand new technology is called Fingopay, and only needs a finger to make transactions.
It was first introduced at Costcutter supermarket during the university’s Fresher’s Week.
Kishan Balli, 22, currently promoting the innovative technology at Brunel University, says:
“We chose to launch this new technology at Brunel because the university is campus based and functions as a little town. The queue in Costcutter is also really long most of the time.”
Sthaler, the company that launched it, said that dozens of students were already using the system, and it expected 3,000 students out of 13,000 to have signed up by November. There are currently 902 Brunel students signed up to the exclusive system.
Replaces contactless
Fingopay is the newest way to pay at the till, and students can now leave their wallets at home and just tap their finger on a scanner inside the store when purchasing their goods.
“It is basically your bank card scanned into your finger. It scans your finger vein, not your finger print which is a lot more secure. It essentially replaces contactless, carrying cash,” Mr. Balli explains.
The company decided to go with finger veins instead of finger prints as prints were found to be easy to hack as they could be copied from the prints left on for example a phone screen.
Is it really reliable?
“It is reliable. It is essentially like using your credit card. We don’t handle your details, we just link it to your finger, and is linked to WorldPay, which means it accepts all credit cards,” Mr. Balli says.
The firm behind Fingopay is Sthaler, a biometric identification and authentication service provider. It claims vein technology is the most secure biometric identification as it cannot be copied or stolen. Even if, for example, a criminal hacks off someone’s finger, it would not work, because it requires the person to be alive.
Simon Binns, Slather’s commercial director told the Daily Telegraph:
“When you put your finger into the scanner, it checks if you are alive, it checks for a pulse, it checks for haemoglobin. Your vein pattern is secure because it is kept on a database in an encrypted form, as binary numbers.”
To use Fingopay, just download the app on your smartphone, or visit www.sthaler.com for more information.
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