Buy that $5.00 Footlong with Your FACE!

A picture of your face that is.  In a press release today, the alternative payment platform Face Cash announced that users of their mobile app for Android and other OS’s can now use Face Cash to pay for purchases at Subway.

Face Cash is an interesting payment concept.  It behaves a lot like paypal, you transfer funds into a secure account, and use it to pay for things and sent money to other people.  Where it differs from paypal is that essentially it makes your Android handset a credit card and electronic wallet.  A quote from the Face Cash site:

FaceCash is a payment system that turns your phone (or a piece of paper if you don’t have one) into a digital wallet. It’s just like a plastic payment card–except that you don’t have to carry the extra plastic. Instead of using your written signature to verify purchases, merchants use FaceCash to verify that your real face matches a digital image linked to your account. Using FaceCash you can pay for items, such as food or clothing, at the point of sale. You can even type in the account numbers on all of those plastic cards on your keychain for the grocery store or the office supply store nearby, so that they’re conveniently stored on your phone. Replace every function of your wallet–plus a lot more–with FaceCash.

What is both interesting and could be a barrier is that the merchants that accept Face Cash for payments must have special display for their registers. The reason being that when you use your Android handset to make a purchase, an actual picture of you comes up, to verify that it is you and not someone trying to defraud your name or accounts. It is an excellent idea, but the adoption costs could be prohibitive.

I am all for being able to use my Android handset for things like this, and I see it as a step in the right direction. If you live in Cali near one of the Subway’s that will be accepting Face Cash, let us know how you experience was!