Amazon.com Inc. today debuted Amazon One, a biometric payment system that allows shoppers to pay at a physical store by placing their palm above a contactless scanner.

Amazon One is initially launching in two of the online retail giant’s Amazon Go stores in Seattle. The company plans to roll out the system to more Go locations over time, and, most notably, hopes to sell the technology to other firms.

The two Seattle stores that host the initial pilot have scanners (pictured) at the entrance where customers can sign up to enable biometric payments. Users need to hover their hand above the device, insert a credit card and then associate the card with their palm scan. After this process, which Amazon says takes about a minute, they can start paying for purchases by holding their hand mid-air for about a second on their way out of the store. 

“We selected palm recognition for a few important reasons,” Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, detailed in a blog post. “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.”

Behind the scenes, Amazon One uses computer vision algorithms to process palm scans. The system picks the most distinct identifiers on the user’s hand to create a unique palm signature, then encrypts it and transmits it to the cloud for safekeeping. An Amazon spokesperson told Recode that images are “sent to a highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud for analysis and storage.”

Users who choose to sign up for the feature will have the ability to delete their biometric data at any time. If any other companies buy the technology from Amazon for use at their own locations, the palm images collected from their customers would be kept in a separate database.

Amazon believes that Amazon One has the potential to be useful for more than just processing payments. 

“Amazon One could become an alternate payment or loyalty card option with a device at the checkout counter next to a traditional point of sale system,” Amazon’s Dilip Kumar wrote. “Or, for entering a location like a stadium or badging into work, Amazon One could be part of an existing entry point to make accessing the location quicker and easier.”

The technology will complement the other cashierless checkout technologies the company has implemented in its stores. Amazon recently introduced a smart shopping cart that automatically bills groceries to the user’s Amazon account and, in its Go stores, the company uses sensors powered by machine learning to detect when a shopper takes an item off a shelf. 

Photo: Amazon