Will that be cash or thumb, sir?

Alert Focus: Mark of the Beast

Revelation 13:16-17
And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...

Citibank rolls out world's first biometric credit card service, targets yuppies here
SINGAPORE NEWS - By Chow Penn Nee -- November 10, 2006 -- Citibank has just raised the bar for the already saturated credit card market.
You won't even need a physical card any longer to party, dine or shop. All you will need is your thumb, for a scan.
Rolling out the world's first biometric credit card service yesterday, the American bank is targeting Singapore yuppies for the launch, before extending it to the rest of its over 700,000 card members here.
With the free service, cardholders need only press their finger to a biometric scanner located at participating stores. Currently, only nine outlets offer this service but others will be roped in.
Not only can customers cut down on payment queue times, they have the added protection against card fraud, said Mr Jonathan Larsen, chief executive officer and country business manager, Citibank Singapore.
"With the credit card becoming very much a part of our daily lives, consumers want greater flexibility in making payments," he said, adding that this move will transform the local payments industry.
The global bank is also looking at using biometrics for Internet banking. Other forms of biometrics involve authentication via facial and voice recognition.
Commenting on the security of the system, Mr John Morris, president and chief operating officer of US-based technology partner Pay By Touch, said the service has "military-level encryption" to ensure data security.
To assuage fears that the data collected would be misused along the way, Mr Larsen said that the digitised fingerprints are encrypted and stored in different databases from other information like the name and card numbers of cardholders.
This keeps the information separate and prevents abuse, said the bank.
Mr Larsen declined to reveal the investment amount of its biometric service, except to say it is in the "multi-million" range.
But it certainly raises the competition for a market that has seen a slew of creative concepts over the years — such as shrinking the cards by half — to woo the crowds.
On whether the latest biometric system will take off, intellectual property lawyer Bryan Tan said: "It's innovative. The current card technology has flaws, as we have seen from security breaches in cloning of credit cards."
But he added that its popularity would depend on acceptance by both merchants and users.
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/153778.asp

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