Amazon will give US users $ 10 coupons for palm prints, TechCrunch reported.
Customers need to visit one of the company's offline stores equipped with an Amazon One biometric fingerprint reader, take a photo, and register this information with their Amazon account.
The company unveiled Amazon One scanners that allow shoppers to pay for goods with a palm print in September 2020. Then they appeared in some Amazon Go stores where there are no cashiers. The devices are now in stores in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Texas, as well as in Amazon Books and Amazon 4-Star, notes Business Insider. In April 2021, the company began installing scanners in its Whole Foods stores.
TechCrunch notes that Amazon can use biometrics for targeted ads, personalized recommendations, and more.
Amazon said the scanning equipment captures “the smallest characteristics of the palms,” from the surface to subcutaneous features such as vein patterns. The company noted that biometric data will be stored indefinitely, even if customers do not make purchases for more than two years. At the same time, users, if they want, can at any time delete this data from their profile.
Amazon's development of a gesture payment system became known in the fall of 2019. As The New York Post wrote, the company planned to link the biometric data of customers with their accounts and payment information so that he could pay for goods using gestures. The new payment system, the newspaper wrote, was to be named Orville.
In early 2020, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Amazon is creating payment terminals that will receive information about the owner of a bank card by scanning the palm of your hand. Thus, according to the newspaper, the company hoped to bypass competitors who create e-wallets tied to smartphones. As conceived by the creators, such terminals can be installed in establishments with a large flow of customers: coffee shops or fast food establishments. It was assumed that the new product will speed up the payment process, since the client does not have to take out his wallet or phone.
