Barclays Vein Reader - Lets hope it works with fat fingers!

Just been reading up on this as i at first was sceptical as to how this would work and also whether my digits were at risk to thieves!

Seems it only works with "live" fingers so no you wont have your hand or fingers removed by thieves. Well thats until they work out some gruesome way of keeping your finger alive by attaching it to a blood source .....

Also appears to be that your veins remain constant throughout your life, but i thought things like veins could be affected by drugs, both legal and illegal?

My mother had chemotherapy several years ago and they always struggled to find a vein - to this day she cannot have blood taken from the arm the used to put the chemo in, so would this not affect the scanner too?

Chip and pin was reported as the way forward when that was introduced, but very quickly became unreliable as you could give your pin to someone!

Watching this new technology with interest - will it become mainstream?