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Tension levels at the grocery store checkout tend to rise when customers need extra time because they have no cash and have to pay with a bank card.

This is especially true in Germany where there is almost always a line at the register and customers are generally required to bag their own groceries.

So some German supermarkets are working to remedy this problem by using a fingerprint scanner to verify identity and make electronic payments.

A pilot project at a supermarket in the Rewe chain is under way near Cologne to test the viability of implementing the payment method in all Rewe affiliates in Germany. The comprehensive affiliate biometric payment method, as it is called, has a “handy” advantage, cashier Helga Gerth said.

”Cash can be forgotten, a bank card can be lost, but a finger can’t,” she said. The new payment method is being accepted positively by people of all ages.

Fingerprint payment systems already are in use in some supermarkets in Germany, but until now only in isolated applications, said Ulrich Binneboessel of the association of German retailers.

“Some 100 markets belonging to the Edeka chain in southern Germany thus far have implemented the payment method,” Binneboessel said.

The fingerprint payment method being tested at the Rewe chain is designed to make cashless and cardless payment possible in participating grocery stores.

Hamburg-based Dermalog, which specializes in biometrics, provides the technology. It officially introduced its system at the computer trade show CeBIT in March to help get the idea of fingerprint payment accepted across Germany.

At Rewe, customers have to register at a terminal in the store by putting one finger from the right hand and one from the left on a scanner and inputting their address and bank account numbers.

“We want to test the technology’s suitability for daily use and its acceptance level among customers,” Rewe spokesman Andreas Kraemer said.

Because only some characteristics of the fingerprint are scanned and converted into an anonymous numeric code, the entire fingerprint cannot be reconstructed. Rewe stores the data in highly secure databases separate from other personal and account data it collects.

“The process is secure,” Kraemer said. “The scanner at the cash register can recognize whether a finger is real or not — it tests the blood circulation in the finger. You can’t use a dummy finger or a fingerprint lifted with sticky tape a la James Bond.”

However, members of Chaos Computer Club recently did something similar. They took a fingerprint from a glass that a customer had held and copied it. They were then able to use the copy to delude the scanner. Nevertheless, the retailers’ association considers the technology secure.

“There will never be a system that is 100 percent secure,” Binneboessel said. He insists that using a fingerprint payment method is as secure as using a PIN.

Bettina Geyk, spokeswoman for the North Rhine-Westphalia data protection office, said its employees were unsuccessful when they tried to dupe the scanner.

As long as the fingerprint is just an optional payment method, the participants are completely informed and also know that a central database is behind the system, it is legally acceptable, she said.

But the fingerprint is not universally accepted as a payment method. If it were to replace other payment systems, there would be a database with the data of practically all citizens stored in it. This would require a legal framework.

Geyk also noted that central databases pose a problem because they are easier targets for hackers. People who support the biometric system always include the time factor in arguing for the system.

“On average, paying using a fingerprint takes only seven seconds, paying with a bank card that requires a PIN takes 12 seconds and paying with cash takes 20,” Kraemer said. Three hundred people have been participating in the pilot project since it launched three months ago. They use the payment method regularly.

One tester, a 28-year-old man, said it was “super” and above all else convenient. But his girlfriend dismissed it. “As long as I cannot see through the system and don’t know who can get access to my data, I won’t go along with it,” she said. 

DPA