PAY BY TOUCH TO OFFER BIOMETRIC PAYMENTS FROM HOME.(Brief Article)

San Francisco-based Pay By Touch, a biometric-payment company, says it will be offering by spring its fingerprint-scanning technology to consumers for home use when making Internet purchases, signing on to secure Web sites and conducting online banking. Fingerprint readers could be plugged in to a consumer's personal computer, allowing an individual to provide initial scans of their right or left index fingers. They would then scan their fingers to authenticate themselves to Web sites, and the later scans would be compared to the originals. The biometric device would be distributed by participating banks and merchants, or purchased directly from Pay By Touch's Web site for no …