PayByTouch: Pitched at breakfast

You can't walk five steps at Demo without tripping over a blogger (hello!) or podcaster, and you can't go two minutes without getting pitched.

Over breakfast (disintegrating croissant & egg sandwiches), I was waylaid by Jon Siegal of PayByTouch. His company is installing fingerprint readers in grocery stories (in Chicago and the Carolinas so far) to replace debit cards and store loyalty cards. Later, onstage here, PayByTouch will roll out its online product. The company aims to enable the fingerprint readers now becoming available for consumers (on some laptops and in a few keyboards) to make online purchases safer and easier. It's likely that consumers will take to fingerprints over passwords, because fingerprints are perceived to be more secure than, say, your dog's name. But I do not think consumers will rush to buy fingerprint readers for their home, so this service will likely grow very slowly.