E-commerce giant Amazon is reportedly working on allowing customers to connect their credit card information to their palms.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Amazon plans to enable complete purchases with a tap of their hand instead of their card.
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The company is seeking to partner with coffee shops and fast-food restaurants for trials at checkout terminals.
Information collected from the terminals will be used for studying spending habits on Amazon’s cloud.
A December 2019 patent filing by Amazon Technologies describes a non-contact biometric identification system that features a hand scanner that generates images of a user’s palm.
Images are acquired using light of a first polarization at a first time reveal surface characteristics like wrinkles in the palm while images acquired using light of a second polarization at a second time show deeper characteristics such as veins.
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By GlobalDataThe palm is identified and subdivided into sub-images, which are subsequently processed to identify feature vectors present in each sub-image.
The feature vectors will be used to identify a current signature, while a user may be identified based on a comparison of the current signature with an earlier stored reference signature that is associated with a user identifier.
The e-commerce giant is aiming to extend its Amazon Go stores chain across the US, enabling consumers to shop without cashiers or checkouts.
