On Tuesday, September 29, 2020, retail giant Amazon officially unveiled its newest public offering called Amazon One. A palm recognition technology, this initiative is part of the company’s latest effort to provide a more seamless and efficient shopping experience to users at some of its retail establishments.
According to CNN Business, Amazon One is a palm recognition technology offering that allows users to link their palm prints or scans to a store-registered credit card. With this, consumers can easily place their hands above a sensor to easily enter stores and purchase items under their names.
This technology allows the firm to use biometric data from users’ palms – such as its surface-area details, lines, ridges, and vein patterns – to create a unique “palm signature” to help identify users, reveals The Verge.
In particular, the company maintains that it uses computer vision technology as it believes that palm recognition technology is considered more private and that other biometric authentication.
In addition, the retail giant said that this is a highly accurate approach, with individuals being required to intentionally use their hands or palms to make purchases.
To maintain records of biometric and palm signatures, Tech Crunch shares that Amazon stores encrypted images in a cloud. However, there are still limited discussions surrounding this process.
The latest offering will reportedly be made available at two Amazon Go stores in Seattle. However, the retail giant plans to expand this service to more stores in the succeeding months, including Chicago, New York, and San Francisco as part of its list, notes CNN Business.
Apart from using the palm recognition tech in its own stores, Amazon also plans to offer the service to “third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places,” shares vice president of physical retail and technology Dilip Kumar.
Although there are still no confirmed third parties who’ll be leveraging the retail giant’s latest innovation, The Verge reports that they are already in the talks with a number of potential customers.
CNN Business states the idea of using biometric data and providing sensitive details to Amazon can be quite disconcerting, especially after the retail giant has been embroiled in a number of data privacy concerns in the past.
Among its activities include selling biometric facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies in the United States, notes Tech Crunch. Moreover, the company’s Ring camera product was also discovered as being used by the police in its operations.
