BioPay may be answer to identity security

06:57 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 21, 2005

By ANNA CROWLEY / 6NEWS

6NEWS

BioPay is making sure fingers do more than the walking. Their system allows fingers to do the paying also.

It may now be the largest credit card breach in the world. Forty million credit card numbers stolen. It's affecting MasterCard, Visa and Discover customers around the world. It's only the latest in a flood of credit card security catastrophes.

Is there a better way to pay for purchases than with a credit card? Some local retailers are turning to biometrics. It is a process where finger prints are scanned to make sure that a person is who they said they are.

Just three years ago biometrics was Sci-Fi. Today, it's how people pay for their coffee.

"The technology is kind of the wave of the future,” said Coffee House owner Peter Glunt.

To register specifically with bio pay, all you have to do is have your driver's license and a blank check. And you have to come up with a ten digit pin. Then you place your right index finger on the pad. Once you are registered the next time a person needs to pay for something all they have to use is their fingerprint and their pin. The money comes right out of your checking account.

“If you are out jogging, you have everything you need as long as you have your fingerprint and your pin number," said biometric payer Paul Mulner.

And while some are using biometrics as a credit device, Carowinds uses finger scans for security.

“It does speed the entry process and it reduces fraud because you can immediately detect if someone is trying to use a pass that's not their own," said Scott Anderson with Carowinds.

And as exciting as the technology is for some consumers, others have raised privacy and security concerns.

"My big question would be the same one that everyone else has and that's big brother," a skeptic said.

BioPay, the company that provides the technology insists it's impossible to crack their system. And security experts 6NEWS spoke to said while not impossible it's safer than using a credit card or debit card.

The company digitizes fingerprints in order to put them into their system. They assign 1’s and 0’s a sequence that just belongs to the individual.

BioPay said their database of thumb blue prints is under tight security.