Amazon's palm-scanning payment technology can also verify ages

US-based Amazon’s palm-scanning payment technology, Amazon One, has been updated with age-verification capabilities to improve user convenience.

With this new age-verification service, Amazon One will allow customers to buy adult beverages such as beers at a sports event just by hovering their palms over the Amazon One device. The Coors Field, which is the home of the Colorado Rockies MLB team, will become the first venue to implement the technology. However, this new functionality will become available to additional venues in the following months. 

This biometric payment technology was implemented for the first time by Amazon in 2020, and it works by creating a unique palm print for each user. That print is then associated with a credit card that the client inserts in the payment kiosk for an initial sign-up. Customers can also pre-configure a card online in advance. The palm print images are encrypted and stored in a secure area in the AWS cloud, built for Amazon One, and only restricted employees have access to them. 

Customers can use the system by holding their hand over a reader on the device, which identifies multiple aspects of their palm, including ridges, lines, and vein patterns. 

According to techcrunch.com, Amazon can blend customer biometrics with payment card information and Amazon accounts, and the resulting tool can be utilised to serve highly personalized ads and recommendations over time. Amazon is leaning into this technology because it believes that palm reading is a more private form of biometrics because nobody can determine someone’s identity just by looking at their palm images.

How does Amazon verify age using this technology?

The system can determine someone’s age only if customers opt to provide their ID to the Amazon One website. To do so, customers can visit one.amazon.com and upload photos of both the front and back of their government-issued ID such as a driver’s license. 

They also need to provide a selfie image to complete the identification process. Amazon has revealed that the identity verification is performed by an unnamed ISO 27001-certified identity verification provider. 

As for buying drinks, the customers will perform a regular palm scan and wait for the ‘21+’ message to appear on the screen along with the previously provided selfie. Bartenders can use this information to identify the customer placing the order. The customer can then scan their palm again to pay for the purchase. Apart from improving convenience for users, this new system could also potentially benefit retailers by minimising queues and boosting sales.