Thread: Biometrics invade banking and retail

Banks have been quietly rolling out biometrics to identify customers — verifying them by their fingerprint, voice or eye scan — and retailers like Amazon are getting into the game.


Why it matters: These companies are amassing giant databases of our most personal information — including our gait, how we hold our cellphones, our typing patterns — that raise knotty questions about data security and privacy.


Driving the news: Amazon wants consumers to be able to pay for items in physical stores by waving their palm in front of a payment terminal, the WSJ reports.


The system would link your palm image to a payment card.


Amazon "plans to pitch the terminals to coffee shops, fast-food restaurants and other merchants that do lots of repeat business with their customers," the Journal reports.


Palm biometrics haven't been used for payments on a big scale, but fingerprints have: Apple Pay and the Apple credit card involve pay-by-touch with a cellphone.

Voice ID is also prevalent, particularly in bank call centers.

MORE Biometrics invade banking and retail - Axios

what could go wrong when they lose your biometric data to breaches ?

nothing, it would be completely safe, almost as safe as all those secured bitcoins

Doesn't stop you from renting or borrowing other people's bank accounts, if the powers that be are trying to supervise or nanny us who vote for those that control them.

The lifestyles and existence most unwittingly prefer.
The dumbing down continues on.

It's one thing someone nicking your credit or debit card, but nicking your finger?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

It's one thing someone nicking your credit or debit card, but nicking your finger?

Or your Gait.