The Cashless Society
Hey, have any of you noticed a “subliminal message” in my blog postings as of late? That is, with the use of Biometrics, heading towards a much easier lifestyle, of course over time. And this will not just be encompassed into our work atmospheres, it will also this “hopeful ease” will also lend itself to the way we travel, make purchases, pay our bills, the works. But there is another way in which now Biometrics will be used to make our lives just a little bit easier: Not having to carry cash. Just recently, a Biometrics Vendor known as “SmartMetric, Inc.” just announced that it is incorporating the use of Biometrics into Smart Cards.
The details: “While most of the World has adopted EMV SmartCards that use what is euphemistically called "Chip and Pin" and such Cards have seen fraud rates halved in countries using these Cards, they still rely on a combination of both new and old technology, namely a SmartCard Chip that is activated by a user's PIN. While the Chip and Pin Card is a great deal safer than the magnetic stripe card that it has replaced in most advanced places around the world, it is still vulnerable to fraud attack because it still relies on the very vulnerable PIN process for authentication . . . the genius of the SmartMetric solution is that it combines two advanced technologies into the Card. Namely, SmartCard Chip and Biometrics rather than the less secure "Chip and Pin." The market size for the SmartMetric "Chip & Biometric" EMV Card is Global and growing very rapidly. Most of the world has fully migrated or is in the process of migrating to EMV chip technology for debit and credit payments.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9505/).
My Take
OK, as you can see up above, the basic premise here is to use Biometrics in lieu of the traditional PIN Number, in order to make things more secure. Nothing new here really, as Biometrics is being used already in conjunction with Smart Cards, and the e-Passport is one of the prime examples of this. Although the specific technology was not mentioned, I am assuming that the templates stored on the Smart Card can range anywhere from iris to facial to fingerprint templates. In fact, this si the de facto standard pretty much all over now. But putting the two concepts together, this combination will soon make its way so that we can now use a Smart Card as a Credit Card, and rather than having to worry about our credit card number being stolen, we just have to worry about now if our template gets hacked into.
But remember that templates are just mathematical representations? So for example, a fingerprint template will be just a series of zero’s and ones (e.g. 101011110101010). So what is a hacker going to do with that? Nothing really. There is no such thing as two identical templates, and each vendor has their own algorithms, so if a template were actually hacked into, and tried to be used into another system, chances are that it will probably not work. So, see how much this is better than just using a credit card number? Just think of all of the advantages of using a payment system like this. We don’t have to carry any cash now, we can just rack up everything on this smart card.
But then of course, here is the flip side to all of this: With an easier way of paying for things now, and not having to worry about carrying cash, will we face the same debt problems like we did back in 2008, and this leading to a much worse financial crisis than we have ever faced? We very well could if the Smart Card payment system really picks up steam here. I mean after all, the thought of having the ability to charge anything and everything is extremely tempting. According the press release, the use of Smart Cards will only proliferate. For instance, “ . . . approximately 1.2 billion EMV cards have been issued globally and 18.7 million POS devices accept EMV cards as of Q1 2011. This represents 40.1 percent of the total payment cards in circulation and 71 percent of the POS devices installed globally.” (SOURCE: http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9505/).
Remember the demise of Border’s and other major newspapers due to the e-reader and other online sources? Perhaps we could see the potential of demise of the major credit card companies over the long haul? Only time will tell, but believe me, with the way technology is advancing, it could very well happen.
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