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