Amazon, customers hand shopping with biometric authentication?

According to a foreign press, Amazon is secretly testing a scanner that identifies customers’ hands and makes shopping payments with the aim of serving through retail stores and subsidiary supermarket Whole Foods. It is trying to do biometric authentication through hand.

The codename for this system is Orville. Synchronization with Amazon Prime information eliminates the need for customers to use a separate scanner for payment. The accuracy is within 1 in 10,000%, but Amazon’s internal engineering team is said to be trying to improve it to 1 in 1 million before the service starts. The payment time is less than 300 milliseconds.

Amazon said it is trying to test the system in some limited stores early next year. This can be a pre-installation step in stores in the United States. Experts have interpreted that Amazon’s purpose to build a system like this is to reduce the time it takes to check out, reduce shopping hurdles, and create an incentive to buy a lot. You may have also considered that you tend to spend more if you don’t directly reach the same type of real money.

Of course, linking this system with Amazon Prime means obtaining customer biometric data. Amazon will be able to access biometric data for a significant number of US consumers. This can be a concern. Amazon is already providing information to law enforcement through facial recognition software (Rekognition). There are also reports of lobbying against legislation banning the indiscriminate collection of biometric information by employers or in consultations with the Immigration and Customs Bureau to use the system for identification of immigrants. Meanwhile, Amazon did not comment on the report. Related information can be found here .