Biometrics invade banking and retail

Banks have been quietly rolling out biometrics to identify customers — verifying them by their fingerprint, voice or eye scan — and retailers like Amazon are getting into the game.

Why it matters: These companies are amassing giant databases of our most personal information — including our gait, how we hold our cellphones, our typing patterns — that raise knotty questions about data security and privacy.

Driving the news: Amazon wants consumers to be able to pay for items in physical stores by waving their palm in front of a payment terminal, the WSJ reports.

• The system would link your palm image to a payment card.
• Amazon “plans to pitch the terminals to coffee shops, fast-food restaurants and other merchants that do lots of repeat business with their customers,” the Journal reports.

 

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