Barclays wants you to give it the finger instead of a PIN
PINs, passwords and authentication codes: they're a troublesome security solution that we'd love to see the back of. The bankers at Barclays know this, so they've looked to biometrics in a bid to banish them forever. Today, the company announced that it's teaming up with Hitachi to launch a new reader capable of scanning and recognising the unique vein patterns a customer's hand. It'll let you scan your finger to quickly access your online bank accounts and authorise payments, reducing fraud in the process. Hitachi's Finger Vein Authentication Technology does the hard work and is said to be significantly harder to spoof because it'll only work if the scanned finger is "attached to a live human body" (no finger-lopping movie plotlines happening here). Barclays' Biometric Reader will roll out first to business account holders from next year, but staff at UK branches may ask you to put your best finger forward in the very near future.
