30.11.2007
4U GmbH, Meerbush/Germany
Since 2002, 4U GmbH has been supplying innovative components for a range of terminals such as vending machines, gaming cabinets and payment terminals in car parks. Most recently, the company has introduced several models of ID Checkers to the German cigarette vending market.
With the aid of the ID checkers the age of the customer can be verified by reading the date of birth from a driving licence or passport/travel passport. At the same time the checker establishes if the ID document is genuine. 4U GmbH has already sold into the same cigarette vending market over 150.000 units of various driving licence checkers which are used to ensure the customer is over 16 years of age. The latest models have been specifially developed with the new Over 18 law in mind.
There are several ID checker models: one type only checks German EU credit-card-sized driving licences while another model can read all 3 types of German EU driving licences as well as German ID and travel passports. They also have a machine that is a bill acceptor with integrated ID verification functionality for German EU driving licences as well as German ID.
The latest complementary development revolves around fingerprint recognition. The idea is to allow customers who have already confirmed their age using appropriate ID documents to register their fingerprint at the same time. As a result verification for subsequent purchases can be comfortably performed at the touch of a finger. This technology (patents are pending) has already been developed for the MDB interface protocol and is being extensively tested in the field.