Back in November and December, I focused on what I deem the “currency of the 21^st century.”

This currency is biometric payment: using your thumbprint to pay for items or complete banking transactions, eliminating the hassle of finding the right credit card to use.

Most importantly, I'm watching a company called Pay By Touch, which recently acquired its competitor BioPay. Both companies are private.

Pay By Touch is the only company that lumps biometric authentication, payments, personal marketing (like when you get a coupon for a product that you bought days before), and payment processing together for an easier, smoother transaction.

It currently owns 30 patents in the United States for biometric transactions, with 70 more pending! Its patent portfolio has also been filed in major foreign countries as well. The company has raised $275 million in investment capital to date.

I believe that this company could go public in the next few years as the wave of biometrics finally begins permeating society. And recent news points to that wave coming sooner than imagined, according to industry analysts.

According to Wired, India is implementing thumbprint banking. A beta program will install 15 ATMs in villages across Southern India and are each expected to service 100,000 workers who will be able to access their funds much easier with the use of their thumbprint.

This test is being considered a “potential watershed for the [biometric] industry.”

India is a prime spot for this technology, as it expects to go from the current count of 35,000 ATM machines to over 100,000 ATMS in the next three years. The initial introduction of ATM's into the rural areas of India failed, because the illiterate farmers couldn't read the instructions on the screen.

Biometric payment won't discriminate against the illiterate farmers.

More importantly, the ease of thumbprint banking is expected to bring more rupees from private hands into mainstream banking.

This kind of banking will also eliminate the middlemen who siphon off profits for themselves before paying employees. It will increase the wages of Indian workers and cut down corruption in the process.

But not only is India excited about biometric payment's possibilities… it's being tested on a small scale here in America.

According to Forbes and Associated Press, biometrics will make its presence well known in retail as early as this year.

At a National Retail Federation seminar earlier this week, CEO Gary Hawkins and his son of Green Hills supermarket, pushed biometric payment as another step toward personalized shopping.

According to the article:

“Under such a program, a supermarket customer logs online, browses special offers created specifically for them based on past purchases, creates a shopping list and then goes to the supermarket where he or she can print out the list. Once the consumer is finished shopping, they can pay via a machine that reads their fingerprint and accesses their stored information, eliminating the need for a credit card or cash.”

Hawkins says that since implementing biometric payment in his store in May of 2006, 50% of transactions are completed biometrically. There are 100 new enrollees every week and those customers enrolled spend 6% more and shop 10% more.

Those numbers bode well as a sample of what to expect once biometric payment options are made available in super retail giant stores like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT:NYSE) and Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST:NASDAQ).

I'm keeping an eye out on Pay By Touch and a possible IPO announcement.

You can learn more about Pay By Touch and biometric payment at its Web site:

http://www.paybytouch.com/portal/site/main