When Apple started selling its iPhone 5S with a Touch ID fingerprint reading sensor, all of us entered the biometric age a bit. Apple acquired the technology when it purchased AuthenTec in 2012. Samsung followed quickly with its own version of the tech in the Galaxy S5 and soon-to-be-released S6. With telecoms company Qualcomm promising to release a 3D-fingerprint reader shortly, having one in your pocket could become increasingly standard in the next two years. And RBS and NatWest have recently announced that customers will be able to log on with Touch ID to do their banking.

The vulnerabilities in fingerprint recognition are not exactly secret. And so the race for alternative biometrics is on. Barclays is bringing out finger vein authentication for UK business customers this year. It is a technology Hitachi developed in Japan that is now being used in cash machines there and in Poland.
 
Your vein pattern is established in the womb, and stable throughout your life, says Hitachi's Ravi Ahluwalia. When near-infrared light is transmitted through your finger, part of it gets absorbed by the haemoglobin in your veins. And so Hitachi's VeinID scanners can authenticate you by your resulting vein pattern. And British startup Sthaler is working with Hitachi and BT on a "pay-by-finger" solution it has trialled at several music festivals. It calls it FingoPay. "You place your finger on [the] scanner, they'd confirm your name or last few digits of your credit card, and the payment is made in real time," says Mr Ahluwalia