BioPay Says 1 Million Enrolled Proves the Case for Biometrics

BioPay LLC today announced it has enrolled 1 million consumers in its biometric check-cashing and payment services since the services started in June 2000 and September 2003, respectively. The Herndon, Va.-based company also said it has processed almost 7.5 million transactions with a value of $3 billion in that time. BioPay is touting the numbers as a sign the use of biometrics to secure point-of-sale payments and payroll check-cashing is catching on. “We have clearly shown that biometrics have become widely accepted for payments and check cashing,” said Tim Robinson, president of BioPay, in a statement. The one-millionth customer enrolled in the company's fingerprint database earlier this month at an Amoco service station in northern Virginia, which is using BioPay to secure payments. The company has signed chains like Bi-Lo LLC and Marsh Supermarkets Inc. for its system, which scans customers' index fingers at the point of sale or at courtesy desks and compares digitized versions of the prints to templates previously archived when the customer enrolled. The payment version of the product routes transactions through the automated clearing house as a debit against the customer's checking account. BioPay says its merchant fee for the service is about 15 cents per transaction. San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, a primary competitor, has also been aggressively marketing its biometric system to supermarkets and other merchants at pricing ranging between 5 and 10 cents for transactions ranging from the ACH to credit and debit cards, which carry their own fees. BioPay says it has the nation's largest commercial database of biometric data. Both systems replace cards, checks, or other payment tokens with quick fingerprint scans.