Amazon's New App Lets You Scan Your Palm to Pay at Whole Foods, Panera Bread and More

[MacRumors]

Amazon today launched the Amazon One app, which is designed to allow customers to scan their palms to make device-free purchases at Whole Foods, Panera Bread, and 150 third-party locations in stadiums, airports, fitness centers, and convenience stores.

Prior to the launch of the app, signing up for Amazon One had to be done in a physical location with an Amazon One device. The app lets customers create a profile, take a photo of their palm, and add a payment method. Finishing sign-up will still require an initial interaction with an Amazon One machine.

Amazon One can be used for payment, entry to venues, age verification, and loyalty rewards. The service uses generative AI to match a camera phone photo of a person's palm to near-infrared imagery from an Amazon One scanner.

The AI system is able to pair palm and vein imagery to create a unique, numerical vector representation that is used for identity matching. Amazon says that it is 99.99 percent accurate.

Palm images taken with the app are encrypted and sent to a secure Amazon One domain in the AWS cloud. Amazon says the service is convenient for consumers and businesses, and that it sees many repeat users at Whole Foods. Amazon One can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Amazon's New App Lets You Scan Your Palm to Pay at Whole Foods, Panera Bread and More

 

[Mr. Heckles]

No thanks. Amazon having my hand print, what could go wrong?

 

[Unity451]

Amazon says the service is convenient for consumers and businesses, and that it sees many repeat users at Whole Foods.

China, is that you?

 

[Supermallet]

Oh HELL no

 

[dreamerstree]

Mark of the beast much?

 

[TechieTaco]

I just setup an Echo Show 5. The experience was clunky, frustrating, and I immediately felt gross for having it in my kitchen. No way in hell would I ever use this service with Amazon.

 

[klasma]

No AI chiromancy service to predict your future?

“Customers with future prospects like yours will also be buying these other foods.”

 

[Apple_Robert]

People that claim they can read your palm are soothsayers and not to be trusted.

 

[jz0309]

interesting, wondering about users experience ... I certainly prefer using my AW

 

[Keymaster]

Um, 99.99% accurate means a on in 10,000 chance it will confuse your palm with someone else. If there are a million users, then 100 other people could use your account. And, what does it do with dirty hands, or a ring you happen to wear that day, or if you have a paper cut? How about a picture of your hand used by someone else? It sure isn't as secure as Apple's face recognition software, and that's even without considering how this ends up in the cloud somewhere instead of being kept on device...you can't use it if the internet is down of there's a connection issue.

Seems pretty half baked, with Amazon trying to use "AI" to make it sound a lot smarter than it apparently is.

 

[Shirasaki]

Oh hell no. Why Amazon wants my palm data of all things? What’s next? Body scan? Iris scan? The only place I have visited that needs palm scans is English test site like IELTS and PTE, where higher level security is required. Why a fingerprint is not enough now?

 

[cartwhisperer]

We all know it's going to end up like this:

 

[klasma]

How about a picture of your hand used by someone else?

Why would my hand be used by someone else? And why would there be a picture of that?

 

[goodbye_harmony]

I suppose you could sit on your hand and feel like someone else was treating you...

 

[oneteam]

Nope. Not for me

 

[BlairMALL]

Um, 99.99% accurate means a on in 10,000 chance it will confuse your palm with someone else. If there are a million users, then 100 other people could use your account. And, what does it do with dirty hands, or a ring you happen to wear that day, or if you have a paper cut? How about a picture of your hand used by someone else? It sure isn't as secure as Apple's face recognition software, and that's even without considering how this ends up in the cloud somewhere instead of being kept on device...you can't use it if the internet is down of there's a connection issue.

Seems pretty half baked, with Amazon trying to use "AI" to make it sound a lot smarter than it apparently is.

"No. It's fully baked!" 😜

 

[TallManNY]

Weird. This seems to be a solution for the problem of: "I want to go shopping at a grocery store and I don't have a credit card with me." I don't think I've had that problem for any shopping situation since I was a teenager. And I'm certain I've never gone shopping at a grocery store without my credit card on me.

 

[ZebraDude]

hmmm......(is it April fool yet??).

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Security concerns aside, is scanning your palm to pay that much faster and convenient than using your phone, smart watch or contactless payment card?

Palm scanning makes it possible to pay in an emergency when your devices get stolen or run out of power.

But is it worth it to have your biometric data stored on the internet?

 

[Cameront9]

Who in their right mind would think this is more secure than using a device, especially an apple device with on-device encryption?

 

[smoker68x]

We all know it's going to end up like this:

So many great people in that ad!

 

[Mr. Heckles]

I have to hand it to them for trying a new idea. 😂

 

[heyriddle]

I actually had to check if today was April 1st after reading this.

 

[JosephAW]

How do you enable “Required Attention for Hand ID”?
That way if someone cuts off your hand they can’t use your Hand ID

 

[hobo.hopkins]

I've used this for months at Whole Foods. It's actually very impressive and super convenient. The main benefits are that 1) you don't have to select 'Pay with Card' on the screen (it chooses whichever default card you have saved), or 2) scan your Amazon QR code to link the purchase to your Prime account. So it saves a few steps. And it's super quick and reliable; I've never had it fail.

Setting it up was a pain since I had to do it in person (and in line...) - so this is a much better option for people.