By Terence Jou

Japan has always been known as tech leader since the 80s. Fax machines for a time was the leading way to communicate, gaming systems like Nintendo led the landscape for video game geeks in the 90s. This week, telecom giant NTT Docomo has showcased a new phone in its summer lineup called the Arrow NX F-04G. No, it’s not a fighter jet, but it is quite impressive – it’ll be the world’s first smartphone that can use iris recognition technology along with fingerprint identification to allow users to unlock their phone and pay through mobile.

Security is always an issue with mobile payment and experts say that with iris recognition, it is seen (no pun intended) as a very secure form of payment. Everyone has their own unique iris configuration and paired along with your unique fingerprint, the combination is as authentic in verifying your identity as if you walked up to a counter with your photo ID to pay. Other companies have explored aspects of facial recognition payments in the past year – Alibaba is pursuing a payment method based off your smile. 

What was once the domain of science fiction is slowly becoming science fact. In Minority Report, Tom Cruise’s character has to get his eyes removed to avoid the detection of police and eye scanners that are used for marketing purposes. But have we started going too far with making payment for purchases more convenient? With data security being such a big concern over the last two years, are people really willing to give up their fingerprints and eye scans knowing that there is the possibility that even that could be stolen by criminals?

Personally, I’m not too fussed when having to step through one or two additional pages to fill out my credit card information via mobile. Sure, my fat fingers do cause some frustration at times, but as someone who wears contacts / glasses and has always had issues with getting the facial recognition function for my Global Entry access at the airport to work, I see more inconvenience with this technology during the early years than what we currently deal with for payment.