Bio-metric Credit cards

04 Mar 2009

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I hate carrying multiple credit cards in my wallet. We must get rid of these plastic cards and move on to the future. The magnetic strips in the credit cards identify you and inform the merchant if you have enough credit to buy any product. The merchant gets the information from the credit card issuer via a phone line.

Think about this. We don’t need any external items to uniquely identify us. Right? Each one of us has unique features like fingerprints or retinas. Why can’t we use them?

Retina scan is one of the oldest & most secure bio-metrics available today. The blood vessels on the back of everyone’s eye have a unique pattern. The retina scan uses a light source to illuminate the blood vessels which are then photographed and analyzed. They use a coupler to examine the pattern.

Faking a human retina at this moment is impossible. I read somewhere that the error rate of retinal scans is one in ten million whereas for fingerprints, it’s one in 500.

OK. Let me come to the point. I want to have a centralized database of retinal scan data of registered users. Instead of carrying a credit card, I would stare at the retinal scan for a moment. That’s all. I’m done. The merchant can ask for a signature.

There must be a touchscreen in front of me. If I have multiple credit cards, the computer should display all the credit cards that I have. I can choose any one credit/debit card for that specific transaction.

At this moment retinal scan is slow. But that’s not an excuse. That’s a limitation that we need to overcome. I firmly believe that in the future, retinal scans will be faster than the bar-code scanner.

This is not just for financial purposes. The database can be used to map the customer’s social security number, driving license, credit history, criminal background, etc.

Imagine that you violated the traffic law for some reason. The cop need not even ask you any questions. Just scan your retina, he has all the information in his fingertip. Hmm… This is not good for me. I didn’t think this when I started typing this blog ;(

Who the hell in the world needs a retina scan? I prefer to carry credit cards ;)

Old is gold ;)

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