The arrival of biometric payment terminals in New Zealand has reignited debate over privacy, identity and whether optional conveniences are changing how people prove who they are.
Eftpos NZ has launched terminals built on Verifone’s Victa platform that can handle payments, age verification and digital identity confirmation without a card or phone by using biometrics, such as their face or palm. Eftpos NZ says the service will be available “for those who choose it”.
Supporters point to fewer cards, fewer passwords and faster transactions. But critics question if technologies introduced separately could eventually form a broader identity ecosystem.
Biometrics are already used in passports, airport eGates, banking and identity verification. Air New Zealand has trialled facial recognition boarding, supermarkets have tested facial recognition, and the technology is now entering payments.
China has also used facial recognition payments for years, while companies in several other countries have trialled systems allowing customers to pay using their face or palm.
Meanwhile, Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster is preparing a Biometrics Processing Privacy Code after around 250 submissions raised concerns about how such data should be collected, stored and used.
During Foodstuffs North Island’s 2024 facial recognition trial, Webster warned that New Zealanders “deserve to shop for their milk and bread without having their faces scanned unless it’s really justified”.
The rollout also touches on the wider digital identity debate. Asked by RCR’s Tane Webster about digital ID concerns, ACT leader David Seymour said: “It’s something that [former UK prime minister] Keir Starmer wanted to do and he’s gone. It was never really an issue in New Zealand. I’m not interested in a digital ID”.
New Zealand has no single national digital identity system, but related frameworks and technologies are being developed, including the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework.
Read more at RNZ and ODT and RNZ on Facebook. Watch David Seymour on Digital I.D and RCR’s webinar: NZ’s New Biometric Privacy Code – Digital Surveillance & The Race Against Friday’s Deadline, and The Fourth Estate with Maree Buscke: Universal Age Verification is Digital ID or access our full coverage of Digital ID and CBDC topics.
This story has been republished with permission from RCR Bites. For news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news to sign up for RCR Bites.
I pay for nearly everything in shops with cash. If you don’t use cash you will lose it and the privacy that it enshrines.
“All states, because they live parasitically off the population on an ongoing basis, depend on eliciting the compliance of the people in some degree; no state can survive a mass refusal to obey.”- Etienne de La Boetie (1530-63)
I for one will not choose and/or comply with their digital gulag agenda. We were warned 500 years ago of the parasite and given the remedy.
“for those who choose it”…
Interesting that just before this dysfunctional, WEF-& Zinoist-based ‘government’ is voted out of office in November, they then try to covertly pull this shit on us!!!
We all know that this will not be optional, but mandatory in due course, and the option will disappear.
This is what Lex Luxon is: a WEF / WHO / NWO puppet who takes advice from another Zionist creature below;
https://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/vinny-mr-news-eastwoods-blog/john-key-past-and-future-exposed-in-minutes-please-share
Also…
https://rumble.com/user/GregReese?q=greg%20reese%20digital%20ID
I’ll stick with cash from the New Zealand Treasury after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is abolished by the New Zealand Loyal Party, and maybe my EFTPOS card in emergencies only, just like my 4G phone that I carry in a Farraday pouch!
& BTW: this was predicted 60 years ago by the genius Pat McGoohan in his series post- Danger man’..!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEd4op5SjRI
AI has already misidentified people in other countries.
Then there’s identify teft using deep fakes.
How fast is it to scan your face or your palm? Faster than touch and go? Yeah right.
Dont use it.
Let them waste their money for being fascist.
J3w Sam Altman…predicting what Noahide Law will look like via electronic means…
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2082312786827456610
https://rumble.com/v76c6ac-israeli-spyware-firm-builds-jewish-secret-police-to-arrest-floridians-for-w.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp_a
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/government-surveillance/garbage-trucks-surveillance-neighborhoods/
https://rumble.com/v79t8lc-ai-data-centers-and-the-new-world-order.html?e9s=src_v1_upp_v
https://rumble.com/v7db52m-mind-over-matter.html?e9s=src_v1_upp_v
As it happens ‘over there’, so it will also come to New Zealand, Australia, etc.
It is up to us which route they push. If we use it we’re fkd