Japanese Biometric Startup Feels Future at Its Fingertips

TOKYO--The 1980s movie "Back to the Future Part II" transports viewers to a 2015 where people pay for cab rides with the swipe of a finger. In the real 2016, fingerprints have entered the mainstream as a way to log on to smart devices, but it's still difficult to pay for rides or at the cash register with just a finger. To be successful, a payment system would have to match the print against a database that may contain thousands or millions of other prints, and--to keep impatient customers happy--do it within seconds. That's the challenge Yasuhiro Kuda says his Tokyo-based startup, Liquid Inc., has addressed. Backed by the Japanese government and some of the nation's biggest names in finance and technology--including the venture-capital arms of banking giant Mizuho Financial Group Inc. MFG -0.31 % and cellphone provider NTT DoCoMo Inc.--Liquid is rolling out a fingerprint-payment system at retailers in Japan and elsewhere in Asia, including Sri Lanka and the Philippines.