Photo: Amazon
Are Consumers Ready To Pay by Palm?
Amazon is bringing Amazon One palm recognition capabilities to all 500+ Amazon-owned Whole Foods stores nationwide by year-end in a major expansion of the payment technology.
Customers pay by waving their palm over a circular scanner, which associates the unique characteristics of the user’s palm with their bank account. Newer features enable age verification and linking to loyalty accounts.
Since its 2020 launch, Amazon One has reached over 400 locations across the U.S., including over 200 Whole Foods and Amazon Go stores as well as stadiums, casinos, and several other grocery and convenience stores. In March, Panera became the first food establishment to deploy Amazon One.
“Since we’ve introduced Amazon One at Whole Foods Market stores over the past two years, we’ve seen that customers love the convenience it provides,” said Whole Foods Chief Technology Officer Leandro Balbinot.
Privacy advocates remain concerned about how such biometric data might be used for advertising and tracking.
Amazon asserts palm recognition is more secure than common identification and payment methods. Unlike a credit card or password, Amazon One creates a “palm signature” that can’t be replicated or impersonated because it’s based on someone’s palm and underlying veins. Amazon writes, “This allows us to delete palm signatures, and generate new ones, at any time.”
Customer data is safeguarded in the AWS Cloud, backed by more than 300 cloud security tools. Amazon promises that palm data won’t be used for marketing or shared with third parties unless legally required to comply with a binding order.
Amazon also says that palm recognition is “considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.”
Amazon was hit by a lawsuit in March for allegedly failing to notify Amazon Go shoppers that it was collecting biometric data, including via palms. Last year, a plan to enable ticketless entry to Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheater through Amazon One was abandoned after an open letter signed by privacy advocates and artists expressed concerns that biometric identifiers like palm scans and facial recognition threaten to turn places supporting live events “into hotspots for ICE raids, false arrests, police harassment, and stolen identities.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Will consumers likely be more comfortable with palm identification versus other biometric (i.e., face, iris/retina, voice) payment methods? Does payment through palm recognition offer enough convenience to offset privacy and security concerns?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Gene Detroyer
Professor, International Business, Guizhou University of Finance & Economics and University of Sanya, China.
Melissa Minkow
Director, Retail Strategy, CI&T
Wow! For real? I guessed we were years away from such implementation. I can’t wait to use it at my Whole Foods. No more cards. No more phones. It will always be with me.
This will be one of Amazon’s biggest successes. Just a “High-Five” to get on the subway, at the ATM, at the Pharmacy, at the coffee shop. No dealing with passwords or QR codes?
Privacy concerns? Well, no one can steal it.
Great points Gene! A palm scan is the ultimate in convenience, once you complete the process to enroll and connect it with your loyalty and payment cards. It would be nice to not have to carry credit cards and if for some odd chance you aren’t carrying your phone, you have your hand to pay. There will be a segment of consumers that are creeped out by the palm scan concept, but I am up for it.
While it’s completely understandable that Amazon needs to find traction in a solution it created, I don’t believe this will gain significant traction in the market. For some consumers palm identification and other biometric data may be an acceptable way to pay – but I don’t believe the vast majority of consumers will. Notwithstanding Amazon’s claims of data security, it’s clear that no system is completely safe. Given the many other ways consumers can pay for goods, I just don’t see the convenience of palm recognition offsetting the potential downside of exposing biometric information.
I’m with you, Mark. I’m not sharing biometric information with anyone.
Also agree. For whatever reason, it creeps me out. I don’t think it’s just age. There’s just information they don’t need to have. Sure, Apple has my fingerprints (4) but it’s local on my phone. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.
Can I make that three ?? (It’s getting crowded…I promise to ‘socially distance’). The ultimate – for me, anyway – issue is what David rather glossed over ( “once you complete the process to enroll and connect it with your loyalty and payment cards.”) In short, a nice connected world you apparently can’t escape (at least not without double amputation). All for the convenience of Jeff or Mark or Elon ?? Thanks, but no.
The fact that you can’t determine a person’s identity via palm imagery is a key part of selling this technology to consumers. If consumers come to know that and believe that, this could be compelling because of its convenience. The challenge is making that knowledge widespread and believed. Consumers tend to be very, very skeptical of anything new data-wise.
Palm recognition aligns well with movements that people are already comfortable with, and feels far less creepy and invasive than retinal scans. If designed correctly it has the potential to become as natural as opening a door with your hand, or holding our cell phones, making its potential for large scale adoption better than other biometric options we’ve so far seen.
Yes! Opening a door with my palm. Why didn’t I think of that? No more keys to carry around. And I could start my car, too!
This is interesting technology and it’s good to see it being offered more widely to those that wish to use it. That said, given that paying by ApplePay or other e-wallets is very fast, secure and easy, I am not sure that palm payment represents a major step up for consumers. Others will shun the technology over privacy concerns. However, the bigger point here is that this won’t do anything to drive custom to Whole Foods – that can only be done through Amazon applying itself and creating a better grocery proposition.
I don’t imagine Amazon is implementing this to gain Whole Foods customers. I am sure they are using WF for proof of concept. Their objective is to have every competing retailer with WF and more also use the technology.
They’re not. But they need to be attracting more customers and that should be the main focus on the business rather than toying round with side projects. That’s the point!
I never gave the airlines a retina scan (all the rage about a decade or so ago) because it’s my eye, for goodness sake.
I’m not crazy about having my palm print in Amazon’s database. It’s one thing to have 2 fingerprints on my phone, but something about the data harvesting makes me uncomfortable. I like either paying by phone or card tap.
Plus, who’s going to clean those things between scans???
I do believe palm recognition would be more accepted than face/iris/voice biometric authentication, as consumers seem more skeptical around facial recognition in light of recent advancements in DeepFake and other AI technologies. However, I believe we are still a ways off from widespread adoption. I anticipate mobile wallets will continue to see the most growth for the next 3-5 years.
It’s a bad sign that Amazon is working so hard to solve what isn’t a problem. My experience at Whole Foods is that they need to be paying far more attention to the goods they stock, how they price them, and how they are displayed than to a yawner like this. Sure, it has a gee whiz factor – but it’s also an insignificant value to customers whether they’ll trust it or not.
Gosh I wish we still had the “Like” button! Well said Doug.
Ditto. Like, like, like
I do wonder if this is one of those “Just because you can…” possibilities. There are two things in this piece that create uncertainty for me. The first is this statement: “Customer data is safeguarded in the AWS Cloud, backed by more than 300 cloud security tools.” Doesn’t that make you think AWS hasn’t quite figure security out yet? Sounds like an abundance of ducktape to me!
Second, counter-intuitively, is that all this raises even more concern about security. Thus the concern that palm-reading can “turn places supporting live events into hotspots for ICE raids, false arrests, police harassment, and stolen identities.” There are clandestine forces everywhere intruding into who you are, what you’re doing, how you spend your money. Some are concerned about face-recognition tech too because you can’t keep your face safely in your pocket. Though, come to think of it, you can keep both your palms there. That thought gave me a flash-back to my father telling me to stop slouching and take my hands out of my pockets.
Really? there’s already a plethora of ways to buy, seems ridiculous and intrusive. So now Amazon (or whomever) has my fingerprints. I vote no to this one, just can’t see it as a convenience as much as i see it as a spy program.
The answer to the first question is yes, consumers will be more comfortable with palm identification than anything that records all or part of their face or fingerprints. And, the answer to the second question should be yes, but given Amazon’s earlier missteps the right answer is, “It’s complicated.” Once again my friend Gene Detroyer has hit it on the head. As I have been writing here for 100 years or so, it is ALL about the interface. The simpler and more secure the interface the easier it will be to get consumers to use it. Palm scans are easy, so the real question is are they secure. As to privacy concerns which is potentially more dangerous; letting Amazon register your unique palm print and keep it on file or handing your credit card to somebody you’ve never seen before in a restaurant? Think about it.
Security. We talk about it all the time, but we really don’t care.
Gene,
Maybe we care, but we tend to think of it in the wrong terms. I’m with you on this one. Palms Up!
Yes, biometrics is far scarier – I can always cancel a card (and mobile readers mean I don’t have to hand it to someone else), but I am literally “handing” my ultimate ID to a company I don’t really trust (warrantless Ring data transfers, anyone?)
First, I like the convenience of palm identification. Whether it’s this or some other biometric identifier, this is the future of payment methods. Any new technology is going to be met with concerns for privacy, safety, etc. If the technology works well, Amazon (and anyone else in the space) will find ways to bring this to the market and become “business as usual” for payment.
This is a great technology whose implementation time is well overdue. It is secure, unique, manageable, and easy to use. This is a great biometric technology that Amazon is deploying which we can easily see being used all around us in places like cars, home access, payment plans, retail, etc. Our phones already use facial scans and fingerprint scans to secure their information, this is just one more way to better protect our personal data while making it available whenever and wherever we want.
While I love tech, I think many consumers won’t opt in to biometric payment methods. Sure, it’s convenient and always with you (and doesn’t need to be charged!), if stolen could be a nightmare. So while I think we will see more of this offered, not sure the adoption rate is going to go through the roof.
How long did it take US retailers to put in “chip and pin” devices in their stores (and even then it was “pinless” .) Don’t hold your breath for this to be widely available.
Palm ID would be the best biometric technology to use in grocery stores. It checks all the boxes for comfort and ease while offsetting privacy and security concerns.
I’m still waiting for an epiphany on contactless methods (BTW, this would seem to be a regression – big time – on that front). I can’t imagine there being less of this in the near future: how can there be less of something that basically doesn’t exist? But I don’t see some explosion if it either: even without privacy/security concerns, this seems to be (yet another) example of something Tech thinks matters…real people don’t.
Palm identification is the next wave of innovation in touchless commerce. Amazon’s palm recognition capabilities will accelerate the value and promise committed to when the company introduced its Amazon Go locations. The Amazon-owned Whole Foods locations are the perfect proof of concept grounds for the latest biometric payment innovations.
Leveraging biometrics and palm reading capabilities is truly groundbreaking. For a society constantly on the move and rapidly moving to a cashless operating mode, there are almost limitless use cases for accelerating the checkout process. The security and encryption that Apple and Google Pay offers will be enhanced with the biometrics and innovations from Amazon.
With any innovations, customers expect clear and transparent guardrails and use of their biometric data. The promise of efficiency, safety, and security of Amazon’s palm reading capability will scale very quickly once consumers feel comfortable that their data is safe. It will be fascinating to see how quickly this scales!
Classic case of “technology in, customer out”. Was this a problem worth solving? Was it justified and prioritized right? For example, would the monies be best used on tech ensuring your OSA problem is addressed first?
A quality customer experience is convenient end-to-end, including checkout and payment. In this digital age, that can include integrating newer forms of payment, such as digital wallets. Though it’s too early to predict its success, biometric checkout such as this is an opportunity for brands to offer customers new, innovative payment methods that are more convenient and less vulnerable to fraud. Every time we swipe our cards, we’re susceptible to identity theft. This method, like other cardless options, reduces that threat, same as biometric security on our phones, which is currently employed by more than half of consumers.
As this technology advances, it will be interesting to see how solutions are (or aren’t) readily adopted and what further iterations develop as we continue to learn about customer perception and habits.