This Is How You Can Shop Using Your Palm: No Ticket Or Phone Needed
How far are we willing to go? How much privacy do we want to give up for comfort? How much trust do we have in the US internet giants? First we could unlock our iPhones by code, then by fingerprint and now by face. Google Maps knows our location so we can be navigated quickly and easily through the traffic jam. In Amazon’s self-service stores Go we only need check in with our Smartphone. What we take from the shelf is recorded by numerous cameras. Shortly after leaving the store, we receive the bill. This works great. But for Amazon this is not easy enough…
With Amazon One, the whole thing should now be getting even more comfortable. From now on it is possible to check in with the palm of your hand — without a smartphone. This whole thing starts this week in two Amazon Go stores in Seattle. Soon this could be possible in many more places — and not necessarily only at Amazon, but for example in stadiums, fitness studios or wherever.
Amazon expects One to be in more and more Amazon stores in the coming months. The company reports on its Day One blog: “And, we believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places. Interested third parties can reach out through the email address provided on our Amazon One website.“
The registration in the US stores is supposed to be, typically Amazon, super easy and takes less than a minute. „The first step is to insert your credit card. Next, hover your palm over the device and follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature being built for you by our computer vision technology in real time”, the blog post says. From then on, customers only need to hold their palm to the device — and are ready to shop. Ones phone no longer needs to be scanned. Convenient. Simple. Futuristic. But also a bit scary.
The whole thing raises many questions in my head.
Amazon answers the most important ones under the blog entry like this:
Why did you create Amazon One?
As with everything Amazon does, we started with the customer experience and worked backwards. We solved for things that are durable and have stood the test of time but often cause friction or wasted time for customers. We wondered whether we could help improve experiences like paying at checkout, presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium, or even badging into work. So, we built Amazon One to offer just that — a quick, reliable, and secure way for people to identify themselves or authorize a transaction while moving seamlessly through their day.
Why did you pick palm recognition?
We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons. One reason was that palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm. It also requires someone to make an intentional gesture by holding their palm over the device to use. And it’s contactless, which we think customers will appreciate, especially in current times. Ultimately, using a palm as a biometric identifier puts customers in control of when and where they use the service.
What is the device actually scanning when it creates my unique palm signature?
When you hold your palm over the Amazon One device, the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm. 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.
How do you protect customer data?
At Amazon, nothing is more important to us than earning and maintaining customer trust. We take data security and privacy seriously, and any sensitive data is treated in accordance with our long-standing policies. With this in mind, we designed Amazon One to be highly secure. For example, the Amazon One device is protected by multiple security controls and palm images are never stored on the Amazon One device. Rather, the images are encrypted and sent to a highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature.
If I decide I don’t want to use Amazon One any more after signing up, can I delete my biometric data?
Yes, you can request to delete data associated with Amazon One through the device itself or via the online customer portal at one.amazon.com. We believe customers should always be in complete control of when and where they use the service, and we designed Amazon One with this in mind.
It’s of course up to the customer to believe this. And it’s up to the customer whether he reveals more of himself for more comfort. Amazon One will be simple. And it should work flawlessly, because it’s Amazon…
It’s exciting to see how companies are making shopping easier for customers. First Amazon ended the annoying queues in the supermarket with its Go stores. Now the even faster and easier check-in with the palm of your hand is the next step.
But questions like these remain: What comes next? How will customers react? And which third-party providers will be the first to use the service?
My guess: Amazon One is getting big. We have seen it again and again in the past: Most people want to do things as comfortably as possible. I can imagine the whole thing being installed in gyms or stadiums, for example. Amazon One is likely to develop as another alternative to check-in, just like a membership card or traditional ticket. It’s questionable how Apple and Google counter. Because Amazon shows: Not only online you can check in at several places with one account. The same thing is true for the real world. Without a password, but with our palm.
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