First it was bonus cards, then self-check-out. Over the years, grocery stores have added new technology to manage customers.
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Now it's fingerprints.
Bi-Lo is among the first major grocery chains in the nation to install fingerprint scanners to fight check fraud. The company is installing the system in all 13 Augusta-Aiken stores this week.
Bi-Lo spokeswoman Joyce Smart said criminals can easily print bogus payroll checks using paper blanks from office supply stores and computers.
"It's the fastest-growing white-collar crime in the country," she said.
The American Bankers Association reported that attempted check fraud, which includes making counterfeit checks, forging signatures and cashing stolen checks, exceeded $4.3 billion in 2001, and that number is believed to have grown since.
The grocer plans to install BioPay's Paycheck Secure identification system in each of its 176 stores.
The first time a customer cashes a payroll check, his or her driver's license and fingerprints are scanned and a photograph is taken. The information is stored in a database and reviewed each subsequent time the person cashes a payroll check.
The system tracks individuals who have passed a fraudulent check and will not allow them to cash more. Those with a clean history are immediately cleared.
"It's more convenient," said Robyn Porter, spokeswoman for Herndon, Va.-based BioPay. "The merchant gets the reduction of fraud, the customer gets their money and their groceries and gets on their way."
Such systems, which rely on biometrics - unique human features such as handwriting, voice pattern and fingerprints - are likely to proliferate as concerns about identity theft and homeland security increase. Passwords and personal identification numbers can be stolen; a person's fingerprint cannot be.
However, opponents say taking fingerprints is an invasion of privacy.
"Once you start collecting biometric information, if you're not keeping it safe, you're opening the customer up to identity theft," said Deborah Pierce, the executive director of Privacy Activism, a nonprofit consumer privacy group.
If people's fingerprints are stolen, they can be blamed for crimes they never committed, she said.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal science agency devoted to standardizing technology, hails biometrics as the future of secure identification and personal verification.
While giving a fingerprint may seem like an inconvenience and intrusion, people in the industry say it is a safe way to handle financial transactions.
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The BioPay Paycheck Secure system being installed in the Bi-Lo on Pine Long Road in Aiken will store driver's license information, fingerprints and a photograph of the customer.
ANNETTE M. DROWLETTE/STAFF
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"We want to do what we can to protect our customers," said Jeff Lowrance, a spokesman for Food Lion, which is testing biometrics systems in several stores, though none in Georgia or South Carolina.
BioPay is even working on a system where customers can use fingerprints instead of debit or credit cards.
"All they have to do is give their fingerprint and a 10-digit PIN number, like a phone number. It's a 100 percent guarantee who they are," Ms. Porter said.
Reach James Gallagher at (706) 823-3227 or james.gallagher@augustachronicle.com.
