Clients of the Carrefour supermarket chain in Belgium will be able to pay for their groceries with the MyFinger system, using their fingerprints.
Several months ago, the supermarket tested a system which replaced the loyalty cards by a fingerprint in a store in the European District in Brussels. As the tests were successful, the chain will now start a pilot project for fingerprint payments. The test will soon take place in a to be determined Carrefour store in the centre of Brussels, reports Business AM.
The fingerprint will then be linked not just to the customers’ bonus cards, but to their bank account. Customers will be able to pay by pressing their finger on a screen next to the cash register. "The intention is to offer the possibility to clients who want to use it," said a Carrefour spokesperson, reports Het Laatste Nieuws. A one-time registration of the client's fingerprints will be required.
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The transaction speed is important in shops with rushed customers, and especially clients in cities and urban areas are fans of the fingerprint payment method, according to Carrefour, reports Het Nieuwsblad.
Carrefour's announcement of the fingerprint payments previously provoked questions from the Belgian Data Protection Authority, which had asked the supermarket chain to give some further explanation, as it wanted to check if the system fully complied with European privacy laws.
In the meantime, the Data Protection Authority and Carrefour have been in contact. "It has been decided to continue our plans," the spokesperson said, adding that they are not expecting any issues. "We have been using the system in Romania for some time now. The privacy laws there are the same as here. It's going well there," she said.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
