Dutch supermarket fingerprint payments plan shelved

Dutch supermarket fingerprint payments plan shelved

Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn has shelved plans to use fingerprint scanning technology as an alternative to card and cash payments at the check-out after a six month trial failed to dispel security concerns.

The supermarket teamed with European payments processor Equens on the six month pilot at a branch in the town of Breukelen, near Amsterdam last year.

Around 580 shoppers participating in the service - called Tip2Pay - were able pay for purchases by placing their fingertips on a reader at the point-of-sale.

The trial - the first of its kind in the Netherlands - was originally intended to test customer reaction ahead of a wider roll out of the technology.

But a supermarket spokesperson told the ANP news service that it will not follow up the pilot in the short term because of fraud concerns. In the first weeks of the trial a security expert managed to pay using someone else's fingerprint.

In March 2006 the UK's Co-operative Supermarket trialled fingerprint authentication technology from California's Pay by Touch, which has since moved out of the market after its parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in March last year.

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