INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Amazon is experimenting with a way to allow shoppers to use a palm-print biometric to authenticate payments and to do so in physical stores
far beyond Amazon-owned brick-and-mortars, (Whole Foods, AmazonGo, AmazonBooks, Amazon 4-Star and Amazon Pop-Up)
Amazon is reportedly looking at QSRs (quick-service restaurants), especially coffee shops.Palm prints have several advantages over more
popular mobile biometric methods, such as fingerprint (prescription drugs, cleaning chemicals, burns and various other things can interfere
with fingerprint readings) and facial recognition (finicky method that requires the face to be a precise distance from the scanner — not
an inch too close or too far — and can suffer from hair growth, lighting, cosmetic changes, some sunglasses, as well as giving false
positives to close relatives)
And unlike my favorite biometric for security (retina scan), it's far less invasive
It's fairly accurate, convenient and (other than forcing customers to remove gloves, which could be a problem with outdoor shops in the
winter) should be well-received.
