IN THE global fight against fraud, forget about your signature, passwords, thumbprints or even iris scanners because, with a bit of ingenuity, they can all be cracked; the future of security lies within the crisscrossed veins of the middle finger on your right hand.

Engineers at Hitachi, the Japanese technology giant, have given The Times an exclusive glimpse of an authentication system that has taken 200 engineers years to develop and is set to revolutionise banking.

Armed with a matchbox-sized “Johmon” vein identification unit, cash machines will only work if the finger of the card owner is pressed on to the sensor.

In less than two seconds the reader is able to scan the minute — and unique — lattice of veins in the central portion of the middle finger and establish that the digit matches the card. There is no need to enter a PIN.

While it may sound futuristic, a version of the system will begin operation at a bank in rural southern Japan this week, and most other banks in the country have plans to introduce the technology. The device works by firing a series of near-infra-red beams at the finger from different angles as it is placed on the sensor.

Under this light, the machine is able to detect veins as a 3D pattern of thin dark lines that is, according to Hitachi’s head of research and development, Dr Michiharu Nakamura, unique to every individual.

The image is captured on a silicon camera and converted into a form that can be matched with records in the bank’s database.

Banks around the world will closely monitor the experience of the Nagasaki-based Juhachi Bank in its pioneering use of the technology. It calls the new account “Bioguard”. By the end of next year, all of the big three high street banks in Japan will have adopted some form of biometric system, representing tens of millions of customers.

Some Japanese banks had been contemplating an earlier version of vein-pattern recognition technology that shone an infrared light on a palm placed above a scanner, but decided that the five-second delay in authorisation was too long for the average customer.

Although Japan has a relatively low crime rate, card fraud has risen sharply in recent years, and an intense fear of crime combined with a passion for gadgetry have prompted the sudden spate of investment in state-of-the-art security systems.

With each vein reader ATM costing about £18,000, a recent survey by the Bank of Japan found that spending within the country’s financial industry was set to soar by £2 billion over the coming year.

Most significant of all, the Japanese Post Office, which holds more than £1.7 trillion in savings, will install the vein readers at its vast nationwide branch network by October next year. Somewhat ghoulishly, Hitachi’s researchers have given serious thought to the possibility that a fraudster, having stolen a cashcard, might also contemplate severing a finger.

The engineers have installed technology that means the severed finger could not be used, because the system only works when presented with veins that have warm blood pumping through them.

Apacs, the British trade association that handles new technologies in bank anti-fraud systems, said that it was closely watching the Japanese experience with vein readers, but that its introduction in Britain was “probably ten years away”.

With internet banking in mind, Hitachi has also designed a home-use version of the technology that plugs into the USB port of a PC and will act as a supposedly unbreakable defence against fraud by denying access to sensitive webpages until it has checked that your veins are in order.

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