Albert Heijn chain testing high end payment technology

BREUKELEN – In this small Dutch town the day has arrived that shoppers will not need to have a wallet with any bank cards in it to pay for purchases. Giving the store a finger will do. That is at least the case at the local Albert Heijn store, which is conducting a trial run with ‘biometrie’ technology provided by a major payment service provider. Customers are invited to set up an account with the store, which as part of the procedure scans their finger in encrypted form for account recognition. When checking out their purchases, the customer puts the designated finger on a pad to finalize the transaction. The payment is directly transferred from the customer’s account to that of the store, as happens with a debit card in North America. The Albert Heijn chain has other technology test runs going in Rotterdam (mobile) and Amsterdam (wireless). The Breukelen method is not without its detractors, although the chain calls it absolutely secure. Privacy issues require that the identity information is registered with the payment facilitator instead of with the store. A ‘biometrie’ specialist is not convinced that hackers with criminal intent will not break the coding at some point.