Beyond Cell Phone Wallets, Biometrics Promise Truly Wallet-Free Future

The rollout of NFC payments in the U.S. has been so sluggish that a superior technology -- biometrics -- is about to catch up

Ever since Google announced that its Android phones would be equipped with a "digital wallet"that allows users to pay for things simply by touching their phone to a pad, interest in our wallet-free future has taken off. Long in use in Asia and especially Japan, the enabling technology, Near Field Communication, has allowed users to more or less completely replace credit cards with phones -- yet the technology has languished in the U.S.   That delay has dragged on so long that at least one competing, not to mention superior, technology has reached maturity. Manufactured by Fujitsu under the trade name PalmSecure, it's a system that requires no hardware on the user side. If you've got hands and you can wave them in front of a detector, you can use it to make purchases.  read more