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Contactless payment has gone one further at a bar in north London – you don’t even need a card on you to pay there.
Instead, Proud Camden lets customers buy pints using just their finger, thanks to Fingopay.
How does this innovative technology work exactly? Well, there’s a bar-top electronic reader which builds a 3D map of the veins inside your finger and connects with a credit card.
This works by shining near-infra red light through your finger which then lights your finger veins up like a Christmas tree.
And it’s a secure form of payment, because the layout of finger veins are unique. Biometric payment company Stahler, who are behind the scanners, say the chance of finding another individual with your exact vein print is so slim that in a nationwide study of 150 million people in Japan, no two people had the same pattern.
Sthaler also takes systolic information when you use the scanners to prove there’s a human being attached to that finger. That information is stored so that when you next use the system you can be identified.
The finger payment systems have only been tested at Proud as of yet but could be used elsewhere in the future.
All you’d have to do is create an account online, register a card to your finger, use your finger to pay and then you get a confirmation email with a receipt attached.
It’s undeniably a quick payment method – and pretty handy for that one friend who’s always forgetting their wallet.
