Patent ID: 7427019

Claim:
A system for facilitating a transaction in a point of sale environment comprising: a merchant input device for receiving at least one biometric sample and at least one customer identifier at a point of sale terminal wherein the at least one biometric sample and at least one customer identifier are transmitted from said merchant input device at the point of sale environment via a network to a host-computing device; and a validating mechanism located at the host-computing device receiving the at least one customer identifier and the at least one biometric sample, validating the at least one customer identifier to determine whether the customer is a member of a predefined customer group associated with the merchant including at least one of members of a household, members of an organization, and members of a club, and when said validating mechanism determines that the customer is the member of the predefined customer group, said validating mechanism validating the biometric sample against a previously stored biometric template associated with the customer identifier, wherein the previously stored biometric template includes a plurality of biometric samples from the customer belonging to the predefined customer group, wherein the transaction at the point of sale terminal is approved when the customer identifier and the biometric sample are validated and validation is transmitted via the network from the host-computing device to the merchant input device located at the point of sale environment.