The days of having to carry a credit card around with you to pay for things may be moving towards a thing of the past. It is not that the credit card itself is going away, only the need to carry one with you. If you could use your fingerprints to charge something, that would make life much easier for everyone. If you are not carrying your credit card with you, it cannot be stolen. This sounds like such a simple process, it is surprising that it has not turned into a product before now given all the problems that the credit card industry has with fraud and the untold costs of that on consumers.This is where PayTango comes in to fill a void which has been a problem for years. Four recent graduates are doing a pilot test with the concept of using fingerprints to charge your purchases at Carnegie Mellon. They have proven that the simple sign up process of placing your index and middle finger on the scan pad works very well. If the scan of your fingerprints does not find a match, it asks you to tie a credit card to the fingerprints. After you swipe a card, it asks you to enter a cell phone number. That is all there is to the process for you to begin using your fingerprints to begin making purchases.
For many years, fingerprints have been used for unique identification of a person and is an accepted standard. So, the idea of using fingerprints to uniquely identify a person tied to a credit card to make purchases makes perfect sense in today's world of technology. If you forget your wallet, it is not a problem when you are paying by using your fingerprints.
We can expect to see PayTango roll out to Colleges and Universities this year as it is a great match and use of technology. They have built their own scan pad which is connecting to their servers where it does a look up of the fingerprints and if there is a match, it places the charge on to the associated credit card. All of this takes a matter of a few seconds.
While the concept of PayTango is a fantastic idea that I believe will be extremely successful, it does have a similar problem which so many other things in the world have and that is fraud. The process of putting two fingers on the pad and then swiping your credit card on the reader to register is the point where things might fail. Unless someone is verifying the credit card is tied to the person with an ID check, there is nothing to stop someone from using a stolen credit card. The only bright spot in the failing is the fact that they have two fingerprints on file of the person who is using the stolen credit card. That will easily help the police to track down the individual.
While some of their marketing sites for PayTango need some work, this will be the future for charging purchases. It will take some work to break into the large retail chains or smaller stores, but it will happen. As an example, we have all moved to an app to charge our Starbucks coffee. How much simpler it will be to pay with fingerprints instead. Your hands will be free from holding your smart phone in making your payment. Others have tried the use of fingerprints for making payments, but PayTango looks to be one of the better ones.
Watch for this as the year progresses as you will be hearing more about PayTango in the future.
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