Saturday, October 21, 2006

Pay By Touch in Zagara's Marketplace

Here's a story from NewsChannel 5 in Cleveland Heights about the launch of Pay By Touch in Zagara's Marketplace....

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Say goodbye to your debit cards, credit cards and checks: purchasing power is now at our fingertips with new technology you could soon see everywhere.

One local grocery store is on the cutting edge of science, being the first to offer fingerprint scanning as a payment method, NewsChannel5 reported. Pay-by-touch is new to Zagara's Marketplace and to northeast Ohio. It is a free service that allows you to pay for your purchases by scanning your fingertip at checkout. When you register, your fingerprint is linked to your checking account, eliminating the need to carry cards, checks or cash. Store owner John Zagara researched the technology for two years before bringing the scanners to his Cleveland Heights store.

He said it's not only for customer convenience, it's to keep them safe.

"Shoppers are always looking away from their shopping cart, inside their shopping cart is their purse. Someone grabs their purse, they don't know who it was. This is way more secure," Zagara said. "You don't even need your purse."

I was talking to a police officer who was doing some shopping and he said, "this has got to be the safest transaction that he's seen out there". Criminals or ID thieves would shy away from this system all day long he said. "I've got to get my dad in here and get him signed up."