Will Consumers Get Hooked On The New Touchless Solution By Amazon

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05 Oct 2021

Would you pay by scanning your hand palm?

In this week’s episode of “All About Payments” Marek Buenting is discussing Amazon’s freshly unveiled technology - palm-print scan that verifies your identity when making a payment in their physical store.

Transcript:

Will consumers get hooked on the new touchless solution by Amazon?

Amazon just unveiled a technology, called Amazon One, which lets shoppers pay by scanning their hand at physical stores.

According to the eCommerce giant, the new system will allow consumers to pay via a palm-print scan that verifies their identity and pushes their payment using whatever card they have stored.

Amazon’s vice president of physical retail said that the technology had been in the planning stages long before COVID-19. However, it definitely tailors to the consumer enthusiasm for contactless payments boosted by the pandemic.

33% of consumers “Agree” and 22% “Strongly Agree” that the increased use of contactless payments during COVID-19 “has made them more comfortable with this payment method for the future”.

From a payment perspective, the new system doesn't really make sense as it seems like an additional step in checkout compared to Amazon Go, a completely frictionless shopping experience.

Furthermore, authenticating a payment with just your palm does not sound SCA compliant as it doesn’t cover two out of the three elements. At checkout, using your palm as Biometric verification as “something you are”, but nothing you “own” such as a debit card nor something you know, makes us doubt if Amazon One makes sense in the EU.

What’s remarkable, is that the technology isn’t intended for Amazon stores alone. Amazon plans to license it to other retailers, performance venues, and the nation’s offices as Biometric Verification tech.

From a merchant perspective, we have some concerns when it comes to convincing merchants to adopt the technology. Will competitors really be eager to bring Amazon’s tech into their own checkout processes and share their consumers’ data?

This shows strong similarities to when Amazon opened up it’s Amazon Pay checkout solution to e-commerce competitors. There was no real anticipation from these parties to integrate with Amazon Pay. It is very well possible that the same will happen here.

Some are mentioning the end of times with your Biometric information in the hands of a tech giant like Amazon.

At the same time, we are seeing a lot of anticipation for a multi-use frictionless authentication tool.

So… Is this the “Mark of the Beast”, a promising contactless alternative payment method or does it just fill the market with unnecessary technologies? Leave your thoughts down below!