Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Another go at biometric payments

One day, someone will crack this nut.

Fingerprints Instead Of Credit Cards? YC-Backed PayTango Aims To Make Payments Work Through Biometrics (Tech Crunch)
One YC-backed startup is betting that fingerprints and other forms of biometric identification may be the payment method of the future though. Called PayTango, they’re partnering with local universities to offer a quick and easy way for students to use their fingerprints to pay instead of credit cards.

The four-person team is basically almost fresh out of Carnegie Mellon University. The co-founders, Brian Groudan, Kelly Lau-Kee, Umang Patel and Christian Reyes, graduating later this summer and have experience in human-computer interaction and information systems.
Read the whole thing. The comments section is unusually lively, though severed-digit-phobia (or is it simple glibness?) seems endemic there. Really, folks. It's a point of sale terminal. I'm pretty sure severed fingers would attract some attention at a cash register, perhaps even more than a stolen credit card.

If you wade those comments there are some enlightened ones there, too.