Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: Scientific Wonders

The future will likely be filled with flying Deloreans, Harrison Ford trying to escape stuff, and chemically altered crazy-eyed bananas with a taste for human flesh. Oh, and there'll be no more credit cards, debit cards or cheques. Instead, everyone will pay by pressing an index finger on a digital scanner. Then they'd be on their way out of the store – groceries in hand.

Oh wait, that's not the future – that's happening now. Minus the bananas, Deloreans and H. Ford running for his life.

Customers of Coast to Coast convenience stores in Tampa Florida are among the first in the world to be able to use their fingerprints as a valid method of payment. You can grab a bag of chips of a gallon of petrol, walk up to the counter, scan your fingerprint and be done with it. Coast to Coast is claiming to be the first biometric scanner in the state of Florida, but others are rolling out around the world – Virginia, Illinois, even the UK are jumping on the wagon. The fad will probably boom soon, as with this method stores will be able to save a few cents per purchase – no more transaction fees with credit card companies and banks.  

There's no more forgetting your wallet or worrying if the guy behind you is watching you enter your pin code. From now on your only concern will be of a sanitary nature. The company making the new bio-print scanners is called Pay By Touch. To anyone worried about security, the company says the following on their web site:

"Your finger is unique to you, which means that only you can access your financial accounts. Because you don't have to present your credit or debit card, check, ID or EBT card when you pay, no one can see your account information. This significantly reduces your chance of identity theft.  And because there's nothing to carry, there's nothing to be lost or stolen! All information is encrypted and stored at secure IBM data centers."

Sounds like a dream for someone who's been terrified of wallets since we got clotheslined by our father's money-stuffed backside at the tender age of five. We meant that happened to some guy we know.

Getting back on track – a store owner that's so far signed up a few hundred people to the system says:

"People either love it or think it's a sign of the coming apocalypse, but to me, it's the wave of the future."

If this truly is a sign of end-times, and it ends up the combination of gas fumes and the digitisation of fingerprints opens a direct portal to hell, than we apologise for condoning it. If it's not, though, then we think it's the greatest invention since the opposable thumb, which first came to fruition in 1272 – a year to the day after Joan of Arc first stepped foot on the moon.

The future is here people – burn your plastic.

Read more:

Let Your Fingers Do The Buying – MarketingVox

[story by Shawn Lindseth]