Using a PIN for cash withdrawals and credit card transactions will soon seem as old-fashioned as signing your name. The Payments Association of South Africa has announced a new standard for biometric authentication‚ which will mean fingerprints‚ palms‚ voices‚ irises and even faces can be used to identify cardholders at any bank or shop.But the association says it has no plans to force businesses to use the technology‚ and none of the big banks has plans to use biometrics.Association CEO Walter Volker said the new standard meant biometric systems would not be limited to individual vendors.Mark Elliott‚ the head of MasterCard SA — which joined Visa to work on the new standard with the payments association — said: “Through this interoperable biometric verification standard in South Africa‚ we can connect a complicated web of players who operate with different rules and technologies.” Payments authentication has progressed from signatures to PINs‚ to chip-and-PIN cards‚ and Volker said fingerprints would be next‚ as they were more secure and convenient.The technology would be enforced only when there was large-scale deployment.Bob Reany‚ global boss of identity solutions at MasterCard‚ predicted the first biometrics payment could happen as early as this year‚ because smaller players wanted to innovate to be seen as "cool".The new system will enable fingerprints to be securely accepted by a biometric reader‚ encrypted‚ then validated. Reany said it would prevent fraud‚ as there would be no passport database.Fingerprints would be saved only on the user's bank card chip. - TMG Digital/The Times..