MoneyAccumulator.com

by Das Brain

It seems like the technologically advanced Japanese have moved passed the stone age technology of the 4 digit pin numbers for gettting cash from ATMs. Now when Japanese consumers want to withdrawal money all they have to do is show their palms or index fingers.

As of February of this year 20,000 of Japan’s 110,000 bank machines have been outfitted with scanners that takes a snapshot of the customers palm or index finger and compare the vein patterns in the palm or finger to a digital stored image on the customers bank card. This new way of authentication have cut down on fraud and id theft and has allowed banks to allow their customer to withdrawal more money from ATMs. The daily cash withdrawal limit has been increased dramatically sometimes up to $10,000 or more. Some security experts think however that the higher withdrawal limit would make ATM robberies a lot more attractive to criminals.

The two companies behind this technology are Fujitisu and Hitachi. Unfortunately, their technologies are not standard or compatible and the biometric scanners are very expensive to implement, so the banks thinking of installing the biometric scanners must calculate if the benefits outweigh the cost.

Will a biometric automated bank teller system come to North America? It may take a while, as Canada and the U.S are generally slower adapters to new technology than Japan, but I think that it is needed sooner than later due to the rising amount of identity theft crimes in the past few years.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 11:28 am and is filed under Identity Theft, Personal Finance, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.