Comment by nickorlow
Wonder what stunted adoption of this? High costs, users not liking it b/c privacy, credit cards/tap to pay being a good enough experience already? The handful of times I used this, it was nice.
Wonder what stunted adoption of this? High costs, users not liking it b/c privacy, credit cards/tap to pay being a good enough experience already? The handful of times I used this, it was nice.
You don't need to press your palm, you just hover it over the plate for a moment. I think the hardware is just an IR illuminator+camera.
It does seem like a technology that should have a useful niche. Unlike fingerprints you don't leave partial copies of your vein pattern on everything you touch; unlike face recognition it's an explicit act you take so it can be used for attestation-type actions (like paying). It still has all the usual disadvantages and advantages of any other biometric. Perhaps the unique niche isn't big enough to fit a new product into though.
If you trust Amazon, they were never storing images of your actual palm but instead creating and storing unique hashes from that data. Again, if you trust them, they did it in just about the most privacy protecting way possible.
I was personally creeped out by it at the handful of Whole Foods I saw this. I’d rather tap and pay or pay by QR code.