The expression “in the palm of your hand” is likely going to be used often by the marketing team at Amazon soon. Reason being that the company has recently announced Amazon One, a service that enables customers to verify their identity as well as pay for their purchases by simply scanning their palm signatures.
The service’s palm-scanner somewhat resembles a modern payment terminal, complete with an LCD display and card slot (more on that later) but with a coaster-sized palm scanner on top. Based on concept images shared by Amazon, the device can be placed on a cashier counter for payment purposes or installed on electronic gates at offices, stations and stadiums for user verification.
How the scanner functions is pretty straightforward; just hover your palm over it and let it do all the work. But before that, you’ll obviously need to sign up with the Amazon One service first in order to get this to work. According to the company, users are required to register their credentials at the machine by inserting their credit card in the aforementioned slot and then following the on-screen instructions to complete the process.
At this time, the company has rolled out the new palm-scanning service at its Amazon Go supermarket in Seattle, and will gradually expand its use to other stores across the US. Amazon says that it is planning to offer the service to third-party retailers and other businesses in the near future as well.
Besides solely relying on Amazon One for payments, the company envisions it to also function as a form of user verification without requiring physical contact. Amazon also believes that this would serve as a better and safer alternative to other biometric methods such as fingerprint scanning or facial recognition. If this new system does take off, there’s a chance that we could actually see it used regularly in other parts of the world including our own country one day.
(Source: Amazon Blog)
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