Biometric Payment's Most Recent Run Will Fail... Again
By Matt Pillar, Editor In Chief
Biometric payment apps remain fundamentally flawed, but the idea of a mobile wallet shows promise.
Next Generation Vending & Food Service is doing for vending machines what Tiger Woods did for golf (pre-sex scandal, of course) and Garth Brooks did for country music. They're making vending machines cool again, building them with touch screens and nutrition information displays and wireless coin dispenser and stock monitors. Very cool.
They're also experimenting with biometric payment options, which I think is not so cool.
Speculators might single out John P. Rogers as the man responsible for the demise of commercial biometric applications at the point of sale, but I disagree. I think the concept was fundamentally flawed long before the point man for Pay By Touch raised enough money to virtually buy out the market then promptly pilot it into the ground on a cocaine binge.
As far as I know, Next Generation Vending & Food Service company president John S. Ioannou is a more scrupulous leader than Rogers. But if it were my company, my payments focus would be on the "virtual" extension of self — the cell phone — as opposed to the very real opposable digits I use to hit the space bar. Despite biometric payment adoption by Piggly Wiggly and Albertsons back in '05 and '06 (has anyone seen any recent updates on those implementations?) the average North American consumer was not willing to see past "big brother" privacy concerns to pay for its groceries biometrically. That's cause enough for my prediction that finger scans won't crack the top payment options for candy bars and packs of gum, probably ever.
The vending company pushing the biometric agenda points to the younger demographic as an accepting target for the technology, and says that retinal scans are even a possibility. They contend that vending machines in other countries are so-enabled. I contend that people in other countries eat dogs and worship cows, but that even our melting pot doesn't produce a large enough demand for profitable dog markets and cow sanctuaries.
Cell and smart phones, however, are sure things for market adoption as a payment device. They've become necessary to carry anyway, they're multifunctional, and while for payments they present their own set of security and privacy concerns, those concerns aren't directly tied to the physical makeup of the body you were born in. That may seem an emotional hurdle as opposed to a logical one, but we're an emotional nation of consumers. When biometric payment makes mainstream news, it's more than the vocal minority and zealous privacy advocates who weigh warily on the conversation.
Next Generation Vending & Food Service is expected to make some determinations on its pilots by year's end. I think there's traction beneath some of the company's innovation, but I don't think 2011 will be the year of the bio-pay vending machine.