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@Mark Yes, but the potential damage should be limited to within the Fujitsu ecosystem. At least the users should not have to use a knife or otherwise to amend their palm veins... or so we hope! :)

@Hitesh There is no physical card involved here. The use of palm vein - as oppoosed to a single fingerprint or finger vein - is so that the identification data is unique enough to not require a second authentication factor (i.e. only palm vein rather than card + fingerprint).

Yet, if there are "too many" registered users, and given that biology by nature has its variances at time of day, based on a person's health, depending on age etc., even palm vein may not work well enough to be single-factor. Hence the possibility to need an additional multi-digit number key.

@Mark While I don't have insight to on how this particular implementation works, in general it is possible to be storing only the hashed signature of the palm vein ID. Meaning if the biometric database is lost, it is highly difficult or practically impossible for the original palm vein information. Fujitsu simply has to change their hash algorithm, get users to re-register, and they would be back in business again, and the stolen data is virtually useless anywhere else too. Of course that's only my guess of how this should work. 

Agreed Alexander, but perhaps it will be quite many years before physical currency becomes second class in terms of usage. In the meantime stepping up security of coins does make sense.

One a separate note, these are eerily similar to the S$1 coins Singapore introduced in mid-2013...

http://www.mas.gov.sg/NewCoins/Coin-Details/Dollar