Forget the titanium Apple Card — Amazon’s latest payment method uses flesh and blood. The e-tailing giant’s engineers are quietly testing scanners that can identify an individual human hand as a way to ring up a store purchase, with the goal of rolling them out at its Whole Foods supermarket chain in the coming months. The scanner uses computer vision and depth geometry and doesn’t require consumers to physically touch it.
Employees at Amazon’s New York offices are serving as guinea pigs for the biometric technology, using it at a handful of vending machines to buy such items as sodas, chips, granola bars and phone chargers. The high-tech sensors are different from fingerprint scanners found on devices like the iPhone and don’t require users to physically touch their hands to the scanning surface.
Instead, they use computer vision and depth geometry to process and identify the shape and size of each hand they scan before charging a credit card on file. The system, code-named “Orville,” will allow customers with Amazon Prime accounts to scan their hands at the store and link them to their credit or debit card. It’s accurate to within one ten-thousandth of 1%, but Amazon engineers are scrambling to improve it to a millionth of 1% ahead of its launch.
Amazon hopes to introduce the tech to a handful of its Whole Foods stores by the beginning of next year and to eventually expand the super-fast checkout tech to all US locations. The pace of the rollout will depend on how quickly Whole Foods is able to install it and train employees on how to use it.
While a regular card transaction typically takes between three and four seconds, Amazon’s new technology can process the charge in less than 300 milliseconds. Retailers have always been interested in faster checkout, you only have to walk into Whole Foods to see the massive lines of people waiting to check out. It’s a massive friction point.
If successful, the technology also could help encourage consumers to spend more when they visit Whole Foods. People tend to spend more when they don’t have the experience of touching something tangible like money. The utility of money becomes more ephemeral.
Here’s what it means: The launch of this biometric payment method would mark Amazon’s first formal step into in-store payments technology and could preface a greater push into the area. Amazon is a long-time player in the payments space with Amazon Pay, but now it may be turning its attention in-store. If the hand-scanning payment method proves successful, it could look to license it to physical retailers and payments providers.
The e-tailer could bundle this offering with omnichannel sales management tools, like those offered by Shopify, or aspects of its Amazon Go technology, which could immediately make it a major player in the in-store payments space. Amazon’s also reportedly working on a mobile payments offering that could be used in-store, which would further strengthen its payments push.
At Amazon’s budding chain of “Go” convenience stores that launched last year, customers use a phone app to check in at a turnstile. They can then fill their bags and carry them out without ever passing a register thanks to computer vision and an array of sensors all over the store. With the new, hand-based tech, shoppers won’t even have to bring their phones. Nevertheless, experts say it’s unclear whether customers will be enthusiastic about scanning their hands at Whole Foods.
Countries with robust surveillance programs like China, already use biometric checkouts in stores and noted that Amazon appears to have made a decision to not use facial recognition. Amazon probably made a judgment call that Americans are probably not going to want to pay with their face, but they’ll be fine to pay with their fingerprint or their hand. It feels less like a mug shot. Consumers should avoid giving up their biometric data because if a company gets hacked, it can take six or more years for consumers to unwind the data theft.
Why would you give them that data? People should understand the risk, and they’re oversold the benefits. There are a couple of nation states that are really good at stealing data right now.
New study found high levels of arsenic in bottled water sold at Whole Foods, Target and Walmart. But hey MAGA’ers, it’s only science. Drink up !