Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Finger-Scanning, Biometric Banking Coming to Poland

by Caleb Johnson on May 13, 2010 at 09:00 AM

Finger-scanning banking Rather than swipe a plastic card, some bank customers in Poland only need their fingertips to withdraw money. According to Popular Science, the BPS SA bank in Warsaw, Poland recently became the first in Europe to install a biometric ATM. Thanks to Hitachi's "Finger Vein" technology, customers simply place their index finger on a scanner that reads their vein pattern and then identifies exactly who they are. Of course, a user must enter a PIN, too, in order to access an account. Right now, there's only one biometric ATM in operation, but the bank plans to install three or four more around the city by the end of the year. If the system proves popular, it hopes to install about 200 more across the country in the next few years.

From buying a soft drink to battling crime, the biometrics industry is expanding. We like the idea of ditching our debit cards in favor of our fingers. It seems like duplicating unique vein patterns would be much tougher than duplicating a fingerprint. Plus, unlike our cards, our fingers don't store other private information. [From: Popular Science]

Tags: ATM, banking, banks, biometric, biometric fingerprint, BiometricFingerprint, fingerprint, money, poldand, security, top, warsaw

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular