STILLWATER, Minn. -- Some Cub Foods customers won't need a checkbook
or a credit card in the checkout line this week, they will only need a
finger.

The Stillwater-based grocery store chain plans to experiment with new
fingerprint-based checkout technology at a store in Blaine starting
Monday. Three more stores in the Twin Cities will get the technology
later.

Under the system, customers must provide certain personal and financial
information when they sign up. When they check out, they place their
index finger on a scanner and enter a code to authorize payment. No
signatures required.

Cub is apparently the first grocer in the Twin Cities to test the
checkout service, but the fingerprint-scan technology is growing more
popular elsewhere.

Last week, for example, grocer Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. said it would
provide fingerprint checkout at 80 stores in the Southeast.

A Cub spokesman said customer reaction to the experiment will determine
if the company offers the service in all of its Midwest stores. He would
not elaborate.

While Cub some rivals in the Twin Cities - Rainbow Foods, Byerly's and
Lunds - all offer self-service checkouts at a few stores, none of them
offer finger-scan checkout.

"We have looked at it," said Michelle Croteau, a spokeswoman for Lund
Food Holdings, which owns the Lunds and Byerly's chains. "At this point
we are not implementing it."

San Francisco-based Pay By Touch made the system for Piggly Wiggly. The
biometrics company said that later this year it plans to roll out its
system at other national retail chains.

The company has said its technology draws on a set of 40 data points
from a finger scan "that cannot be reverse-engineered into a
fingerprint," the company said in press statement on the Piggly Wiggly
deal. "The data points are then encrypted to allow for a secure identity
match at retail point of sale."