Digicel Pacific Limited, a mobile network operator across the Pacific and a division of Digicel Group, today announced it is deploying biometric enabled payment systems into stores in New Zealand to offer its Digicel Mobile Money customers a more convenient way to send money home to the Pacific. The brand new system enables customers sending money home to register just once and record their fingerprint as permanent identification within the Digicel system. From that point on, existing customers simply scan their fingerprint at the VeriFone terminal to retrieve their details and make a new transaction - even if they registered at another store.

Regulators in New Zealand require that photo ID is recorded every time an international money transfer is made in order to satisfy Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. The new fingerprint technology avoids the need for customers to provide identification every time they transact, which means no forms to fill in and less time spent at the counter.

Digicel Mobile Money (DMM) is a service in use in five countries in the Pacific. It turns a subscriber's mobile phone into a wallet, enabling them to store money, send money to each other, pay bills and top up with airtime. Last year Digicel launched a web-based extension to the service to enable customers in New Zealand and Australia to send money home to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

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KYC is driving the spread of biometric identification, the problem is having enough readers. Maybe we'll have biometric readers on mobile phones?