Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday unveiled a new biometric payment system using palm recognition, to be made available to rival retailers, and also promoted as a replacement for badge entry at stadiums or workplaces.
The system called Amazon One was touted as “a fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to make everyday activities like paying at a store, presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium, or badging into work more effortless.”
It would be installing the system at its Amazon Go retail locations, starting with two stores in its hometown of Seattle, Washington, the US technology giant said.
Photo: AFP / AMAZON
Amazon vice president Dilip Kumar said that the system was developed as “a quick, reliable, and secure way for people to identify themselves or authorize a transaction while moving seamlessly through their day.”
Amazon One uses each individual’s “unique palm signature,” an alternative to other biometric identifiers such as fingerprint, iris or facial recognition.
“No two palms are alike, so we analyze all these aspects with our vision technology and select the most distinct identifiers on your palm to create your palm signature,” Kumar said in a blog post.
In Amazon Go stores, the palm-waving system would be added to the store’s entry gate as an option for shoppers.
“In most retail environments, Amazon One could become an alternate payment or loyalty card option with a device at the checkout counter next to a traditional point-of-sale system,” Kumar added.
The company said that it was “in active discussions with several potential customers,” which could include other retailers, but offered no details.
The announcement comes amid rapid growth in the use of biometric payments ranging from fingerprint verification on smartphones to more sophisticated systems using facial recognition.
China’s Alipay (支付寶) — the financial arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) — has been using a “Smile-to-Pay” system, with a machine roughly the size of an iPad, for retailers.
The shift has also raised privacy concerns about how biometric data would be safeguarded and protected from hackers.
Amazon said that the biometric data would be “protected by multiple security controls and palm images are never stored on the Amazon One device,” but send to a “highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud.”
Separately, Amazon defended its warehouse safety record after a news investigation pointed to a higher-than-average injury rate in the firm’s logistics operations.
A report released by the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal project found that Amazon fulfillment centers recorded 14,000 serious injuries last year requiring days off or job restrictions.
The report, citing internal documents, concluded that the overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33 percent higher than in 2016 and nearly double the industry standard.
The Reveal report, based on data from 2016 through last year from more than 150 US-based Amazon warehouses, said that Amazon’s claims on workplace safety belied the statistics.
Responding to the report, Amazon strongly denied misleading the public and said that Reveal’s interpretation of the data was wrong.
“We strongly refute the claims that we’ve misled anyone. At Amazon, we are known for obsessing over customers — but we also obsess about our employees and their safety,” the firm said in an e-mail.
Amazon said that Reveal was “misinformed” regarding a safety metric of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The company said that there is no industry standard on “serious incident rate,” and that using that metric distorts Amazon’s policy, which “encourages someone with any type of injury, for example, a small strain or sprain, to stay away from work until they’re better.”
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