LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. -- A New York City-area startup has come up with a service to solve the problem of people getting locked out of their apartments. KeyMe is offering self-service kiosks that store a digital copy of your key, said a report by The New York Daily News. If your key gets lost, just head back to a KeyMe kiosk and get a new one, day or night.
These key keepers have been set up in five 7-Eleven stores across Manhattan this week, Long Island City, N.Y.-based KeyMe's 28-year-old founder and CEO Greg Marsh told the newspaper.
"Three million people get locked out annually in New York City," Marsh said. "Most call an emergency locksmith and, on average, pay $150. I wanted to come up with a better solution."
Storing a key with KeyMe is for free. The cost of creating a physical key when you're locked out is $19.99. The kiosks can also create on-the-spot duplicates of keys, charging $3.49 for basic brass keys and $5.99 for novelty keys, said the report.
Marsh said that KeyMe employs high-level encryption and does not store addresses or any other data that can match the key information with a location. Logging in requires fingerprint authentication, the report said.
The company is looking to expand, said the paper, starting with New York. "New Yorkers get locked out a lot," Marsh said.
Click here to view the full New York Daily News report and photo.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.