Forget cash or credit; pay for things with your blood

Technology such as the Google Wallet makes purchases by swiping mobile phone across a point-of-sale terminal. iPhone 5’s iTouch fingerprint scanner lets you buy apps by, you guessed it, scanning your fingerprint. These hassle free techniques pale in comparison to ultimate act of convenience: simply waving your hand across a scanner.

PulseWallet, a recently technology displayed at CES, identifies you by scanning the blood vessels in your hand before automatically withdrawing the money from your bank account. Infrared sensors photograph the unique vein signature in a user’s hand, verify that blood is flowing throw the veins to ensure the user is physically present, and match the scanned pattern with what’s on the card. Once these variables line up, which happens within half a second, the purchase is secured and the user can walk away with a receipt.

Image courtesy of The Verge.

PulseWallet is the ultimate act of convenience – nothing makes compulsive buying easier. When users are presented with such conveniences, there is a higher likelihood of splurging on purchases. One gluttonous example that comes to my mind is the vast number of pizzas ordered through Xbox 360’s Pizzahut app. Using the credit card number linked to the Xbox Live account, users are able to order pizza deliveries by pressing a few buttons – there is minimal interruption to their gaming and no standing is involved. This alone earned local franchises a total of $1 million within a few months.

Outside of convenience, there’s the huge hygiene factor that comes into consideration. Incorporating PulseWallet as point-of-sale terminals in public transportation eliminates the need to ever touch those germ infested kiosks.
Image courtesy of The Verge.

Yet rampant spending is not by far the biggest concern with having your blood vessels stored on the internet – having your blood vessels stored in the cloud is the biggest concern. Is it really safe to entrust such sensitive data to businesses given the massive amount of hacks regularly occurring? Target alone had between 50 and 70 million credit card numbers stolen. Do we really want our blood work online given the NSA’s exposed snooping?

PuleWallet’s CTO Matt Saricicek assures us that security is his firm’s top priority; “Nobody has a database of veins,” he tells the Verge, even if they did, blood needs to be actively flowing through the scanned hand in order for the purchase to be initiated he adds, implying that acquiring the data yields nothing if not paired with the hand. Saricicek states that the Fujitsu infrared camera used by PulseWallet is 99.99992 percent accurate in matching scanned subjects to their register blood vessels.

The second challenge to overcome is getting small businesses to adopt PulseWallet as a point-of-sale terminal. Palm scanning has been around since 2005, but never reached mass-market proportions. Some hospitals use it to identify patients; some countries use it as a supplemental security clearance for accessing bank accounts, but mobile payments have yet catch on in the US. Yet for this to even happen, PalmSecure must first demonstrate its commitment to security.

Via Verge