Barclays, a multinational banking and financial services company, is now launching a new piece of technology for accessing __________ bank accounts.

Users will place one of their fingers into a scanner which detects vein patterns within the finger instead of having to use a series of passwords and numbers to be able to log __________ their accounts.

The technology is quite distinct from fingerprint recognition. Barclays will start offering the service to business customers only for now, however, "finger vein __________ " is likely to be available to all customers in the future.

A portable scanner needs to be plugged into the computer's USB port to be able to check the unique pattern of veins inside the finger. To reduce the risk that __________ will break into a bank account, the scanner accepts only a living finger.

Any business adopting the technology can register several fingers from different members of staff, so one person can make a payment and another can __________ it.

Barclays says the technology is relatively expensive at the moment. They will charge business customers for the convenience __________ the machines, but haven’t been willing to reveal the level of fees.

However, for those clients, who do a lot of large transactions, this makes a lot of sense, according to the bank's head of personal and __________ banking. Vein recognition is thought to be a more secure and reliable technology than checking finger prints and Hitachi has been researching the technology for 15 years.

Light that is transmitted __________ the finger is partially absorbed by haemoglobin when passing through the veins, and thus enables the scanner to authenticate the user's vein pattern.

That should also __________ the possibility of a criminal hacking off someone's finger, but there is still some concern about the protection of such data.

But Barclays says that the information will be held on a computer chip inside the scanner in __________ form, once the system is up and running.