Pay By Touch: Another Store Signs Up, Along with Discover

Pick 'n Save Metro Market, a supermarket in downtown Milwaukee, today began accepting transactions secured by Pay By Touch, a San Francisco-based company that authenticates payments through digital representations of customers' fingerprints. This development comes shortly after the announcement of a co-marketing agreement between Pay By Touch and Discover Financial Services Inc. that will involve preferred position for Discover in Pay By Touch's electronic wallets. Pay By Touch's adoption at the Pick 'n Save store coincides with the grand opening today of the store. Shannon Riordan, director of marketing for Pay By Touch, says the company has deployed fingerprint scanners at the deli counter and customer service desk as well as at all checkout lanes, and was waiting for the first-day crowd with four enrollment stations. Lines formed at all four, she says. “It hasn't stopped since the doors opened,” she says. “People are really embracing it.” She estimates the store, operated by Roundy's Inc., will enroll some 150 customers by day's end. There's no agreement with Roundy's, which operates 120 stores across three chains, to deploy the system in other stores, but Riordan is hopeful there will be if Pay By Touch is “successful” at the Milwaukee store. Pick 'n Save is noted for innovative technology, particularly in customer service. The downtown store, for instance, features a wireless café. The agreement with Discover calls for the two companies to promote each other with what Riordan calls “committed co-op marketing funds.” Discover will promote Pay By Touch to its 50 million cardholders as a technologically innovative way to pay without using a card, keyfob, or any other token. In turn, Pay By Touch will at selected merchants name Discover first among the cards listed in the credit card category in the electronic wallet displayed when customers check out. Consumers designate the accounts?credit, debit, or checking–they want to use when they enroll, but merchants control the order in which the accounts appear at the point of sale. The incentives required for merchants to agree to the primary listing for Discover will be a matter for negotiation between merchants and Discover, Riordan says, and may involve breaks on transaction fees. No such deal has yet been consummated, but one is in the works, she says. With the marketing arrangement, she says, Discover should see increased card usage and Pay By Touch will gain added exposure to the Discover card base, along with association with Discover's brand value. Pay By Touch collects card and checking account data, along with fingerprint templates, from consumers at enrollment. After that, consumers pay merely by touching a scanner and entering a search code at the point of sale. All data are stored at secure data centers maintained for Pay By Touch by IBM Corp. The company stores mathematically derived representations of fingerprints rather than the prints themselves. The system is currently live at four Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. stores in South Carolina, a Seattle supermarket, five video-rental stores, and the Pick 'n Save store. Further announcements of retailer adoption are coming soon, Riordan promises. The company has focused on supermarkets, but she says interest is coming from a range of retailers, including video stores, pharmacies, and so-called big-box merchants.