Amazon Expands Contactless ‘Palm’ Technology During Pandemic
By Fiona Tang
Amazon.com is opening new physical retail stores so customers can make purchases by scanning their palms, a step that researchers said capitalized on consumers’ concerns about hygiene during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The technology, called Amazon One, debuted in September at an Amazon Go store in Seattle. Officials touted the technology as welcomed during the pandemic but declined to comment further to Digital Privacy News.
It uses a “biometric identification system” that includes a hand scanner that can identify a customer based on such characteristics as “lines and creases in the user’s palm, veins, bones, soft tissue or other structures beneath the epidermis of the skin,” according to a patent Amazon filed in December 2019.
To sign up for Amazon One, a customer inserts a credit card and positions their palm above the scanner. The scanner then generates a “unique palm signature” and connects the customer’s card information to their palm.
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