BIOMETRIC data are the watchwords in security as banks, schools and government departments attempt to combat identity fraud, but a Manchester nightclub has become the first in the country to introduce fingerprint technology.

The Inner Circle, on Barton Square, is a members' only club that charges £1,000 a year for membership and, to maintain its exclusivity, the club's owners have installed XPR's BOI'X system.

It is a biometric access control system that reads a fingerprint in less than one second, compares it to the records, and then unlocks the doors to the club, which are cell doors reclaimed from Clerkenwell prison.

Managing director Craig Ince said: "We wanted a way to ensure our Inner Circle members can control their own entry into the club and also to give them total exclusivity.

"We take their biometric details when they join and assign them a number, then all they have to do is simply touch a special panel and they're in."

With customers paying such a high price for their privacy, and members including staff from Citi Bank, Zurich, Halliwells, Yahoo and Myspace, the reliability of the system will be crucial.

XPR claims the system gives a false acceptance rate of 1 in 100,000, and the fingerprint reader itself is of a rugged waterproof design capable of standing up to extremes of temperature and humidity. Mr Ince added: "From the demand we've had, it seems that Manchester's business community has been waiting for something like the Inner Circle.

"It's great to see when all the talk is about economic downturn and the credit crunch yet again Manchester is bucking the trend."

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