[llsf]

The fact that you do not have to pull a card or even your phone could make the transaction faster. And it would link to my Prime account so I could get my discounts/points. All with just me showing my palm.

Using your palm print (and actually blood vessels network) could be also more secure than tapping a card (NFC contactless).

I enjoyed using the technology. I did test other biometric payments like with face at the Intuit Dome in LA. But it felt more creepy and far less secure... as I was walking by some gates would open and some random person could enter as me... and possibly charge my linked payment. Using the hand with Amazon Go felt safer.

Wondering if Amazon would be willing to sell the technology, as I could see being deployed in lots of retail stores. The fact that it was made by Amazon, likely prevented to sell the technology to other retailers. Someone like Verifone, Ingenico or even a POS like Micros should go after the technology...

[jcrawfordor]

I don't know that there is much technology to sell, palm vein imaging is decades old in the access control industry. The reason you don't see it anywhere is because it was already a commercial failure in that application, by the end of the 1990s.

Amazon was even trying to sell the technology for access control applications, but their sales material were remarkably devoid of any reason to choose it over other biometrics.

[wiml]

Out of curiosity, why did it fail in that market?

[baby_souffle]

> The fact that you do not have to pull a card or even your phone could make the transaction faster.

My watch was already there for those situations where literal seconds matter.

Ironically, they were 'retrofitted' onto the payment terminals at the local whole-foods. They used the same "magnetic stripe simulator" tech that samsung was shipping in their phones for a few years about a decade ago.

If you had jumped through the hoops to set it up to associate a palm print with payment details, the system is still just swiping a virtual card in the payment terminal which is objectively less secure than the chip/nfc that has more or less replaced the old mag stripes.

[reaperducer]

The fact that you do not have to pull a card or even your phone could make the transaction faster.

Except they didn't in the real world.

The only place I ever saw these was at Whole Foods, and the store's POS terminals don't let you tap or palm until all items are rung up and there's a total available.

Usually when the cashier is down to the last two items, I have my card already out and hovering over the chip reader. The transaction completes in under two seconds.

Palm scanning is slower than any payment method other than cash or checks.

[driverdan]

> The fact that you do not have to pull a card or even your phone could make the transaction faster.

Oh boy, it saves you 5-10 seconds. Or better yet, pull your card out while waiting in line so it's ready when you go to pay.