Cash, card or fingertip? Supermarket offers 'finger vein' payment

A UK supermarket has become the first in the world to let shoppers pay for groceries using just the veins in their fingertips.

Customers at Costcutter, at Brunel University, in London, can now pay using their unique vein pattern to identify themselves.

The company behind the technology, Sthaler, has said it is in "serious talks" with other major UK supermarkets to adopt hi-tech finger-vein scanners in thousands of stores.

It works by using infrared light to scan finger tips and then links the unique pattern of veins just under the skin to a corresponding map held by the payment provider.

Customers' bank details are then stored with a payment provider.

Shoppers can turn up at the supermarket with nothing but their hands to make payments in three seconds.

Fingerprint recognition, used widely on cellphones, has been found to be vulnerable to hacking and can be copied from finger smears on phone screens.

But Sthaler, the company behind the new technology, claims vein mapping is the most secure biometric identification method because the map cannot be copied or stolen.

Sthaler said it takes one minute to sign up to the system initially and, after that, just seconds to place your finger in a scanner at the supermarket checkout.

"When you put your finger in the scanner it checks that you are alive, it checks for a pulse, it checks for haemoglobin," said Sthaler. "Your vein pattern is secure because it is kept on a database in encrypted form."