2y ago

Pay with your palm?

__ New age technology has enabled consumers to pay for groceries with one wave of their hand, a development that has been deemed “kind of scary”.

The technology was highlighted in a video of a woman checking out of US retailer Whole Foods with Amazon One – a system allowing shoppers to pay with a mere flash of their palm. __

Hmm, interesting. Not sure what I think about this. Anyone in the US using it already?

I mean it's convenient. You can't forget your palm at home. Your palm can't run out of battery. It's pretty hard to replicate based on the article which suggests it is "impossible for a person’s palm to be replicated because its scan captured the hand’s 'underlying vein structure to create a unique numerical, vector representation'”.

I'm guessing this is for small transactions, not buying a car, so I doubt people are going to be chopping off people's hands and using them to buy groceries (hopefully!).

Could be a useful tech?

20 comments

- Also, it's very easy for someone to replicate the biometric features that the reader would use in something they could wear.
- This is the right answer. It leads to the dystopia. Or.. A worse one than now

Very cool up until the part where it says it's run by Amazon.
I don't want every retail transaction to be logged by Amazon and I especially don't want them to have biometrics data of me. Fuck off.
Become a bank and comply with the respective regulation if you want to run a banking system.
- Become a bank and comply with the respective regulation if you want to run a banking system.
  If this system will ever become more widely used, Amazon will be forced to comply with bank regulations.
  
  Not if Amazon can cheat itself out of those regulations that is.

I'm just not sure that I believe in the efficacy of palm reading.
"I see... Financial trouble in your future... beep."

Ha! And the tin foil hat wearers were worried about the government injecting a damn invisible chip when they can just read your hand outright and be done with it. I love it. It’s so poetic.

Also this kind of exists already, with one extra step. Use your thumb to open your phone, touch your phone to the point of sale device.
- There is a significant difference. Your fingerprint information is stored on the phone, and you can remove that information anytime you want, even dispose the phone if you have to. In this case a company will have your biometric information and "hopefully" protect it. Because once it is stolen, you cannot change your hand just like you would change your password.
  
  It's not even your finger print information that's stored on the phone. It's information that your fingerprint unlocks. If you give me your phone, I can't get that use out of that information. The same way websited don't save your actual passwords, your phone doesn't save your actual fingerprint.
  
  I totally agree, I just didn't want to elaborate at the time. The biometric data on a phone is supposed to be local to the phone and not stored at the enterprise level.
  I would never, ever, trust my biometric data to some unaccountable corporation - not matter what types of promises they may make.
- Yeah, that's what I use for close to 100% of my payments since about 2020.
  I guess losing your phone or running out of battery are the limitations with that. Not often a problem admittedly.
- Except Kroger still doesn't have this?? Tf Kroger

"That'll be $3.99. High five!"

a system allowing shoppers to pay with a mere flash of their palm
Imagine people misunderstanding how the technology works and instead slapping their cashier when asked for payment...

I remember in the early 90s our local YMCA had a hand/palm reader that we used to sign in, instead of membership cards
that thing was terrible at recognizing my palm, or maybe it was just because I was a kid my hand kept growing

No no no, fucking no. I didn't want a cell phone and then I had to have one for work and now they want my biometrics? Every bit of identity and every ha'penny you have must be accessible and on display at all times with this fucked up society. They won't be happy until we're all just walking around naked carrying every dollar we have fanned out in our hands so it can be counted faster.
All convenience paid for with intrusion.