BANKING MACHINES CUSTOMER SERVICE

Users of the Rapid Pay Machine (RPM), an ATM and "cash management machine" that does things like cash payroll and personal checks, don't need to carry a banking card or some type of ID. "All they have to bring is their face," says Mary Burczyk, senior vice president, corporate marketing and communications with Innoventry, the machine's manufacturer.

The machine utilizes a face-recognition system to provide financial services for what Innoventry calls "the self-banked" customer—the 40 million to 65 million U.S. consumers who do not have bank accounts, or do not rely on traditional banks for routine financial transactions. In the past, these consumers have met their cash needs through improvised networks of stores and currency exchanges.

The San Francisco-based Innoventry recently signed deals to install 27 of the RPMs in Texaco- and Shell-branded retail outlets in the Southwest. The company also announced a contract with Circle K to place a thousand of the machines in its convenience stores, and 179 machines in Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana.

The RPM relies on a biometrics technology called FaceIt that scans a user's face. It was developed by New Jersey-based Visionics. Recent tests by the U.S. Army showed the machine to have a less-than-1% false-reject and false-accept rate, says Francis Zelasny, Visionics' marketing manager. FaceIt is also currently being used by the Israeli government for a border crossing project.

The first time that an RPM user makes a transaction takes the longest—about 3 to 5 minutes—as Innoventry matches the customer's photo with some background information. "But the more you cash checks with us, the more we know you, the more we know where your checks are coming from, so the transaction time should actually get shorter as you build up this relationship with us," Burczyk says.

Innoventry's RPMs also come with a multimedia screen that can be customized to deliver promotional, advertising or public service messages in almost any language. "We can customize that down to a specific store location—for say, a store in Fort Worth that wants to run Pepsi ads at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon," she says. The RPM is expected to eventually dispense money orders and handle bill payments and wire transfers.—Andrew Kaplan



While companies such as Peapod and Webvan use the Internet to help consumers avoid supermarkets altogether, a new Web-based service called BeeLine Shopper, www.beelineshopper.com, is designed to make shopping trips to grocery stores more appealing by speeding them up.

BeeLine participants scan the bar codes of their everyday products at home and then transmit the list to BeeLine, which automatically arranges it according to a store's sequence of aisles, says Leib Lurie, president of the new company. BeeLine's online database can configure shopping lists to match the aisle layouts of 15,000 supermarkets nationwide.

Based in Troy, Ohio, BeeLine has been testing the service with 50 households and three area stores, Lurie says. At press time, an official launch with three major chains with locations in southwest Ohio was scheduled for January 2000.

"Shoppers tend to do a lot of zigzagging in the store trying to find certain items," he says. "In our tests, customers are saving about 30 minutes on their key shopping trip of the week."

Customers will be able to test the service for 30 days before signing up for a subscription that costs about $1 per week, Lurie explains. BeeLine requires the user to have an Internet-connected PC at home. When consumers sign up, they will be provided with a Symbol 2000 scanner from Symbol Technologies, Holtsville, N.Y., and a cradle that connects to a home PC.

The system is also designed to help shoppers stick to special diets. If a shopper is on a low-sodium diet for health reasons, the BeeLine's database will suggest low-sodium alternatives.