[thinkcomp]

That's a pretty long scroll box to find the person in the first place. Or an added step as you key in the first few letters of the person's name. At large retailers or QSR chains that put a premium on fast checkout, neither option will fly.

I obviously appreciate the simplicity of paying with your face.

[gojomo]

I doubt any firstname+lastname (or even just firstname+last_initial) situation would require a scroll box... you could fit 20+ recognizable faces on a screen. Sort them by age and in the few cases where there are that many collisions, cashiers would know just where to look.

Keying the name is a bigger issue... so I suspect terminals in larger retailers will eventually just detect the N nearest pay-eligible handhelds.

[thinkcomp]

The additional hardware (plus integration cost) is something that reatilers don't want to spend on.

In contrast, barcode scanners are already there and they typically emulate keyboards, so no special integation is required.

I'm not convinced that paying with your name scales for most retailers. The retailers I've talked to aren't convinced, either.

[gojomo]

Barcode scanning is another good option to speed the initial account-identification.

I suspect in coming years, multiple systems will all work together to train users to bring up barcodes on their handhelds for specific purposes (as with boarding passes or "Jonathan's Card").

[pbreit]

Swiping a card is sounding a lot easier right about now.

[akavi]

A pretty obvious next step would be to pair this with facial recognition.

That'd cut down the search space dramatically.

[ch]

With NFC, they could just limit the list to devices in close proximity to the point of sale. That said iPhone doesn't have NFC so they need to solve that problem some other way.

The general point of scale issues still is valid, but culling the list of payers seems surmountable.