I buy therefore I am

Over the past several months, biometric technology vendor Pay By Touch has begun working with some mainstream retailers to set up and get the bugs out of fingerprint-based commerce.

Pay By Touch is based in San Francisco, suggesting that this idea has, if nothing else, a serious hipness quotient. And it's venture-capital funded to the rather serious tune of $60 million. Neither of these impress me much. But what does catch my attention is that this company is actually testing the technology in several real-world settings, including Pathmark stores, Albertsons and Star Markets. This is not a toy or bleeding edge application--it's something as mundane as buying your groceries. I must admit that I'm excited...and appallled...and fascinated.

For me at least, there's something impersonal and vaguely threatening about the idea of merging your unique fingerprint with the world of financial databases and electronic funds transfers. To be honest, it sort of gives me the creeps to share my very skin with vendors, no less so because there allegedly have been cases where thieves chopped of the fingers of those who used biometrics for banking.

Paradoxically, that the very things that make fingerprint identification a scary notion make it seem quite appealing as well. For a digital citizen like myself, there's something thrilling--even awe-inspiring--about the idea of merging your finances and physical self. Complete information immersion, after all, is the ultimate goal of any dedicated Internet user (okay, for me at least). Even with my atavistic alarm bells going off, I find the idea of biometric buying too seductive to avoid. So Pay To Touch, and competitors, bring it on!