At the end of 2019, Dutch department store chain HEMA announced
it was going to stop using fingerprints for its time clocks and
sales registers. HEMA had been planning to introduce this fast and
reliable method of identification in all its shops. It decided to
cancel the entire operation, however, because it was contrary to
European privacy law as set out in the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR).
HEMA was not the first retailer in the Netherlands to do away
with its fingerprint scanners. The shoe chain Manfield had been
forced to do so after the District Court of Amsterdam ruled that
its authorisation system, which used fingerprint scanning to enable
access to sales registers, was in breach of the GDPR.
