Biometric Payment Increases Purchases 12%

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. operates 114 supermarkets in South Carolina and coastal Georgia. Eighty-four stores are company owned; the remainder are franchised operations. Store management first considered offering a biometric payment option after Rich Farrell, VP of information services, noticed the Pay By Touch system while attending a Food Marketing Institute Marketechnics trade exposition.

Pilot Test A Biometric Payment Option
Piggly Wiggly tested the system for a seven-month period beginning in July of 2004. Shoppers could sign up for the program at stores' guest services counters or by visiting the vendor's Web site. "A significant portion of each unit's clientele decided to do so," according to Rita Postell, Piggly Wiggly spokesperson. Consumers selected the major credit cards and/or debit cards they wished to use in conjunction with the program, then had one finger scanned by a Pay By Touch scanner. Scanned finger data, which is stored on secure IBM servers, is also linked to shoppers' Piggly Wiggly loyalty cards.

To conduct a payment, customers swipe a finger across a reader that interfaces with the POS system, key in a self-selected access code, and indicate which payment method they want to use.

Reception to the system was positive. Of noncash transactions initiated in the test stores, 15% to 20% were completed via the biometric technology. Sales to patrons enrolled in the program increased by 12%. Additionally, the company noticed a drop in its transaction processing costs to pennies apiece versus a much higher amount for a typical transaction.