Citi Annual Report - Excited about PBT

In it's Annual Report (Adobe PDF Format) Citibank talks about it's excitement over partnering with Pay By Touch and bringing biometrics to it's customers.

Click on the picture on the left to enlarge and read page 10, which talks about the "innovation" Citi brings with biometrics from the Annual Report.

In a related development, Pay By Touch is telling ComputerWorld Singapore that it has 10 Million Customers enrolled worldwide...mostly in Asia (Asia's Biometric Scanning Craze) and Europe.

Here's an excerpt from that article.

Fingerprint recognition has penetrated the market to a certain degree, and the traditional drawback of this form of biometrics -- cost -- is eroding.

The cost of fingerprint readers has dropped to the point that they are shipping with inexpensive laptops and add-on USB readers can be purchased for as little as $30.

Another advantage of fingerprint based authentication is that it smoothly bridges the offline and online worlds. Pay By Touch, a provider of fingerprint-based authentication, gained its early traction in retail settings, using fingerprint authentication as a replacement for debit cards, check-cashing services and as a way to store shopper information without forcing customers to carry around store loyalty cards.

"According to Pay By Touch, its authentication service is used by more than 10 million consumers at more than 3,000 retail locations. Most are in Europe and Asia",

but several chains in the United States, including Albertsons, Jewel-Osco and Lowes Foods, have started rolling out the service. As consumers get comfortable with this as a means of brick-and-mortar shopping, Pay By Touch intends to extend this to the online world.