And you thought those fingerprint readers were cool. Hitachi has taken biometrics to the inside of your body with their latest identification system based on the veins in your fingers. While this technology could probably be used to authenticate sessions on a computer, Hitachi has instead decided to implement the vein-reader as part of a biometric cardless credit payment system. The bloodthirsty reader reads your vessels and tells the system who you are.

To get it to work, all you have to do is slide your finger into the extra tiny x-ray machine (well, it’s like an x-ray, only it’s reading blood vessels and not bones) and then “in a second you’ll be verified.” The plan is to ship these out to convenience stores and vending machines in Japan some time in the near future.

First, you could pay with your credit card. Then, there was the touch-less pay pass system. And then there were tags placed inside cell phones. This, my friends, is the next frontier in ways to empty your wallet.