Forget Credit Cards And Cash, You Can Now Pay With Your Fingers

You don’t need to worry about leaving your wallet at home anymore

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Imagine you’re out with friends for dinner at your favourite restaurant. After a great time of sharing meals and laughter, you proceed to the counter to pay. But instead of handing cold hard cash or swiping your card, you simply scan your finger on the biometric payment device.

And you’re done! Cool, right?

Well, imagine no more! Local fintech company, Touche, has recently launched the biometric payment system at Grignoter, a wine bar at Outram Park. Touche is also in talks with 150 other restaurants, hotels and clubs islandwide.

Your fingerprints are linked to your card details, which you register once at any participating merchants. Your card details and fingerprint images are not stored on the device itself; rather, they are encrypted on Touche’s cloud system.

Benefits Of Biometric Payment

1. Secured Payment

Payment can only be authorized through your prints. Each individual’s fingerprints are unique, so there’s little to no chance of replicating them. The biometric device has sensors that can pick up more than 90 unique points from your fingerprints to ensure accurate identification.

2. Less Risk of Fraudulent Payment

Your credit card details are not stored within the device or with the merchants. So even if you lose your credit card and it’s then used at any of the participating merchants, transaction will not happen because you’ve already linked your fingerprints to your card.

3. Convenience

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You literally don’t need to carry anything with you – no cash, cards, wallet or even your phone! Er, but just make sure your hands are intact though. Also, your transactions are all stored within the cloud system, so if you ever need to retrieve the information, you have easy access. No more hunting around for crumpled receipts!

4. Personalized Service Experience

Merchants will now have access to your preferences and spending habits. For example, if you’re always ordering the same menu item with tweaks, the information is readily available at your waiter’s fingertips. Based on your previous visits, they can even make suitable recommendations or offer discounts.

Some Concerns To Note

Of course, no system is perfect. So before you start wiping sweat off your fingers, consider the following:

1. Increase In Prices

The system is not cheap to install. Grignoter owner said that it cost S$6,500 for installation, devices and training. As with any devices, there’ll also be maintenance cost involved months or years down the road.

This could result in establishments increasing menu or service prices.

2. Possible Glitches

You’ve seen it happening before at customs. Sometimes, the system is down or there’ll be technical glitches and it can’t identify scanned prints properly.

So it would be prudent to at least bring a spare credit card along the next time you visit your favorite club.

3. System Won’t Work For Everyone

An ex-colleague of mine could never use the scanning machine at customs because it just can’t identify her fingerprints. And to the best of her knowledge, she has never hurt her fingers in any way.

So if you face a similar issue, this payment system would most likely not work for you as well.

The Future Of Payment In Singapore?

At the moment, cash and cards are still the main modes of payment, although we do see more people adopting mobile payment systems such as Samsung Pay, Apple Pay and Android Pay.  

This means people are receptive towards a more convenient payment system. If the biometric system takes off, then this will be a really attractive alternative to the mobile payment platforms; it might even render them obsolete.

Personally for me, I prefer the increased security and convenience the system offers. We rely too much on our mobile phones as it is, so paying with just our fingerprints lessens the risk of loss of privacy and credit card data.

What do you think? Yay or nay to paying with just a touch?