Paying for things with your fingertip! How do fingerprint scanners work?

It uses infra-red light to track your veins.

You probably know you can pay for stuff by tapping your bank card on the card reader, right? If you have a really fancy phone, you can even pay for stuff using your fingerprint too!

Well, a supermarket in London is trying out something even cooler.

They’re accepting payments using your veins! Don’t worry, it’s not as gruesome and gory as it sounds…

Called Fingopay, customers connect a bank account to a big computer, which contains a map of the veins in their finger.


Then, when customers want to pay for something, they just have to tap their finger to the special reader.

The reader uses infra-red light to map the veins and match them with each customer. Unlike biometric scanners which use your fingerprint to identify you, Fingopay can’t be tricked with fake fingerprints.

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Vein scanners aren’t new tech, though. They’re also used as a way of accessing top-secret high-security buildings and banks use them to authorise internal transactions.

The people who make this scanner are talking to gyms, football clubs, and even schools about using the technology. That’s all to make sure that only the right people can get access to the spaces they want to be.

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Want to know more about contactless payment and how money works?

Techno Mum’s been investigating how bank cards know if enough money is in your account!

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