__ New age technology has enabled consumers to pay for groceries with one wave of their hand, a development that has been deemed “kind of scary”.
The technology was highlighted in a video of a woman checking out of US retailer Whole Foods with Amazon One – a system allowing shoppers to pay with a mere flash of their palm. __
Hmm, interesting. Not sure what I think about this. Anyone in the US using it already?
I mean it’s convenient. You can’t forget your palm at home. Your palm can’t run out of battery. It’s pretty hard to replicate based on the article which suggests it is "impossible for a person’s palm to be replicated because its scan captured the hand’s ‘underlying vein structure to create a unique numerical, vector representation’”.
I’m guessing this is for small transactions, not buying a car, so I doubt people are going to be chopping off people’s hands and using them to buy groceries (hopefully!).
Could be a useful tech?
If this system will ever become more widely used, Amazon will be forced to comply with bank regulations.
Not if Amazon can cheat itself out of those regulations that is.
Problem is: if Amazon does not follow the rules&certifications no banks accept their transactions, so dead end. If Amazon became a bank and issue credit cards, if they don’t follow rules&certifications no banks accept their transactions, so another dead end.
Banks are much more powerfull than Amazon. Only option is a walled garden, but it would maybe work only for Amazon’s employees.