Could F-Payments Be the Next Big Thing?
by: Aleia VanDyke
Discover has just announced that it will begin testing fingerprint payments at its corporate headquarters in Redwood City, CA, and soon employees will be able to pay for their cafeteria food and convenience store purchases by simply tapping their index finger to a biometric reader. Partnering with Natural Security, a French biometrics company, Discover plans to launch the pilot within three months to a small testing pool of 300 to 350 Discover employees.
In addition to fingerprint identification, the selected employees will also receive a chip-enabled key fob that serves as backup in the event that the biometric identification or associated payment card information does not process correctly.
Is it too soon to coin the term “f-payments” for fingerprint payments? Javelin’s extensive study of new payment technologies has repeatedly demonstrated that consumers are incredibly slow to change their behaviors. Mobile payments (“m-payments”) and mobile commerce (m-commerce”) have been the darlings of the payments industry for years now, but consumers are still far more likely to choose traditional methods and channels to complete their transactions.
Perhaps the greatest example of just how long it takes for consumers to reverse their habits is the disparity between the point-of-sale (POS) and e-commerce markets: as Javelin recently documented in the 5th Annual Online Retail Payments Forecast and Update, the $318 billion e-commerce market still makes up less than one-tenth of the total U.S. domestic retail market.