I literally both saw them all over and never actually saw anyone use it.
No clear onboarding pathway, no explanation as to what it did or why use it, no clarity on what happens to the data. Just a box sitting there.
It was as if all the focus was on the tech and nobody bothered to think about how to actually deploy a product to market.
Gym entry system where you can't share your entry fob with a buddy
Corporate access control system, no need for a guard to deal with people who've forgotten their cards.
Time clock where it's impossible for workers to clock other people in/out.
Using your palm print (and actually blood vessels network) could be also more secure than tapping a card (NFC contactless).
I enjoyed using the technology. I did test other biometric payments like with face at the Intuit Dome in LA. But it felt more creepy and far less secure... as I was walking by some gates would open and some random person could enter as me... and possibly charge my linked payment. Using the hand with Amazon Go felt safer.
Wondering if Amazon would be willing to sell the technology, as I could see being deployed in lots of retail stores. The fact that it was made by Amazon, likely prevented to sell the technology to other retailers. Someone like Verifone, Ingenico or even a POS like Micros should go after the technology...
Amazon was even trying to sell the technology for access control applications, but their sales material were remarkably devoid of any reason to choose it over other biometrics.
Of course everything around cameras has come down in cost tremendously since then, so palm imaging is probably reasonably priced now, but it lacks a clear enough advantage over better-established methods for anyone to switch over. Besides, just the fact that you have to position your palm the way you do makes it difficult to install them in most practical door situations. Fingerprint sensors turn out to be very compact and fairly intuitive to use.
I scoured Amazon's sales materials around Amazon One very closely, because I found it fascinating that they were seemingly trying to revive the technique. I was surprised they were doing it as a payment device, but it made more sense when I found materials (I think old FCC filings) that suggested that it was originally designed as an access control product and perhaps "pivoted" to payments later. The strangest thing about it though was how unconvincing the sales materials were, it felt like they were really grasping at straws for a reason to select it over other options.
From what I could find it doesn't appear to have been an acquisition; the regulatory paperwork was all filed under some LLC but it seemed to just be a front company for Amazon which is fairly common for that kind of thing. So my best guess is that it was a pet project of someone influential enough to burn some R&D on it, and maybe pivoting to payments and putting them in Whole Foods was thought to maybe be the hail Mary that would turn it into a real business.
The actual integration with the PoS in the stores was clumsy too, they Velcro'd an NFC antenna to the side of the credit card terminal to use to make payments by proxy card. I originally got obsessed with it because I was trying to ID the suspicious device Velcro'd to the payment terminals at Whole Foods!
My watch was already there for those situations where literal seconds matter.
Ironically, they were 'retrofitted' onto the payment terminals at the local whole-foods. They used the same "magnetic stripe simulator" tech that samsung was shipping in their phones for a few years about a decade ago.
If you had jumped through the hoops to set it up to associate a palm print with payment details, the system is still just swiping a virtual card in the payment terminal which is objectively less secure than the chip/nfc that has more or less replaced the old mag stripes.
Oh boy, it saves you 5-10 seconds. Or better yet, pull your card out while waiting in line so it's ready when you go to pay.
Except they didn't in the real world.
The only place I ever saw these was at Whole Foods, and the store's POS terminals don't let you tap or palm until all items are rung up and there's a total available.
Usually when the cashier is down to the last two items, I have my card already out and hovering over the chip reader. The transaction completes in under two seconds.
Palm scanning is slower than any payment method other than cash or checks.
solutions that often look brilliant on paper but are poorly executed or inadequately supported in practice (Amazon GO, Fire Phone, Dash Buttons, Astro, Amazon Wallet, etc, etc)
Problem Statement Traditional authentication methods like ID cards, passwords, and physical keys are cumbersome, prone to loss or theft, and inefficient in high-traffic environments. In retail, healthcare, and enterprise settings, these lead to delays, security vulnerabilities, and increased operational costs. Biometric alternatives like facial recognition can raise privacy concerns and vary in accuracy due to lighting or masks. There’s a need for a secure, frictionless system that leverages unique, non-intrusive biometrics while giving users control over their data.
I believe the problem was that people simply don't want Amazon to own copies of our finger/hand prints. I intentionally avoided the scanners because of that reason.
This was always doomed to fail, this was almost as dumb an idea as the Facebook Portal. Yeah, the tech is there, and works great, but just like no one wanted Facebook to have a 24/7 camera in their house, I don't think people want to give Amazon their biometric data.
FB Portal was rolled out right after all the media reporting about Cambridge Analytica and how utterly untrustworthy Facebook really was at it's code. A friend of mine was PM on it and I felt terrible for him because as excited as he was, I knew it was always going to fail.
"Do you have chickens in a coop? Hire Chicken Eating Foxes to watch them for you! They won't eat your chickens!" Note: Chickens may be eaten at anytime and will probably be eaten instantly.
Yep. And for this privacy risk, I can't even use my palm anywhere but whole foods.
You clearly saw some value in the convenience. Smartphone and smartwatch NFC offers that convenience everywhere. Even setting up palm authentication feels like unnecessary work.
the Prime code thing is a good point tho
But... while all payment terminals are compatible to VAS and SmartTap, very few have the firmware and a POS that can make sense of it. So, in practice, beside Walgreens and maybe CSV, it is not much adopted.
A slice of cheese pizza is $2, and a bottle of water is $1. Then I sit in the park and watch life happen in front of me.
Very therapeutic.
Unlike your palmprint, you can get a new ring with a new private key if yours is compromised.
I thought that the engineering team at Amazon did a great job with Amazon One. I wish someone could pick up the tech and carry on.
https://www.theregister.com/2002/05/16/gummi_bears_defeat_fi...
For 2020's-era palm scanners you don't have to replicate a 3D hand -- just like a video chat doesn't replicate my 3D face. You just have to emit photons (some of them infrared, yes) in the correct pattern. The hack won't look like a 3D-printed hand, it'll look like a display panel that works beyond visible wavelengths. It'll probably be some device developed for a totally unrelated market, and then one day "whoops, all those palm scanners are 0wn3d" (natürlich auf Deutsch) will be a talk title at CCC.
But all this is academic. The real problem with biometrics is that when your password is a body part, you can't change your password.
If someone manages to replicate my pulsing blood vessels from my hand and trick the scanner, that would be fine. I would dispute the purchase, and the store would not even pull the camera footage, and just refund.
Amazon Go was not used to hold access to bank accounts or crypto wallets. I think it was a good technology and balance between convenience and security, for the purpose (grocery loyalty and payment).
A twin or even sometimes a relative (son and mother) can open an iphone and its banking apps using the facial recognition. That is more concerning to me than Amazon Go palm scanning for groceries.
Set up once with the CC with rewards for groceries, hover hand 2 seconds, done.
Apple Pay in the phone or watch are super convenient as well, but they take just a tad bit more of time between selecting the menus in the touch screen for pay options, and then selecting the matching CC.
I save like 30s? Possibly. Is this tech overkill? Most likely.
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app
or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or
a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app
or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you
can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by
reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: IFiQvbhPlrP5MaRdM5km5yAdFAEmvC_IUx2LA899aXly11zm3wAoKg==
Not every amazon site is cloud-scale. Niche product like this might be running bare metal under someone's desk
The site came back around eu-west-1 which, while correlation isn't causation, it does look meaningfully in causation's direction and wiggle an eyebrow suggestively.
So, in practice, I am not sure if that is truly a non-starter for "normies" and even some "techies". I already gave up on my face biometrics living in US.
For security reasons, it makes sense that if you use your phone number rather than the QR code, of course you don't have the option to utilize the linked card.
Meant to register the palm thing but just never got around to it, wasn't even really sure how/where? That was the main blocker for me -- was never prompted to do it as part of checkout, and didn't want to waste time going over to customer service to ask how.
Steps I remember:
1. Put down everything so you have 2 free hands.
2. Mention that it will take a minute to the cashier.
3. Unlock your phone.
4. Find the Amazon app (this part is odd, you’re at Whole Foods).
5. Dig around in the UI for the store code. They move it around.
6. Present your phone to the cashier to scan.2. The cashier is busy scanning, you don't need to mention anything.
3. FaceID unlocks it automatically.
4. What Amazon app? I use the Whole Foods app. I keep it easily accessible, I don't need to find it.
5. The code is always displayed by default when you open the app. You never have to dig around anything.
6. Or scan it yourself under the customer-facing scanner they have for that.
When we have to reach for the phone, unlock it (with biometric), tap to open the Whole Foods app, and then present the phone to scan a QR code.
While it might be not much more, it is more than just show one hand.
Now I need to tap through a stupid app and scan a code.
We always stopped at whole foods on the way home from the gym, and I didn't always have my phone with me or readily accessible. This will definitely cause me to cut back on this quick stop in / impulse purchases.
The code both applies your Prime membership and links your preferred payment method.
I get that it is fairly easy to use the app on the phone (although my WF has terrible reception, which is frustrating enough when I come to pick up packages), but waving your hand would still be faster.
The palm thing was never prompted as part of checkout, it's true. I just did it while I was being checked out once years ago since it seemed so cool and it worked flawlessly since then. Honestly, I found the UX of it really all well done. Even if it didn't make it in the long term, I hope the team knows there were a few happy users out here!
EDIT: I just installed the Whole Foods app and it opens directly to the QR code. That's nice. It also selects the appropriate payment method. There doesn't seem to be a watch equivalent so I'll have to pull my phone out, but this definitely reduces the terrible blow of losing the palm scan. I hope it works well without good Internet access!
Haven't the (big) supermarkets in the US adopted the whole "scan and go" thing that lots of countries in Europe have had for a long time? (maybe more than a decade at this point I think)
When I go to the supermarket, right after the entrance, I pick up a scanner, then as I pick stuff, I scan them and pack them. Then when I'm done, you scan a code, give back the scanner, take your stuff and leave. Kind of assumed this was done in the US first and then spread here, but maybe it started here? Not sure.
We just got tap to pay a couple of years ago. People still pass bits of paper with signatures on them to pay each other for stuff.
You mean NFC payments? :| Oh, and checks too? I guess things were very different than my assumption, interesting thing to have learned today. Thanks!
NFC payments have been around for a bit but are only recently very widespread, COVID really pushed that forward.
The only notable big name holdout is Walmart. Somehow, they're still on either chip+pin or magnetic stripe cards only.
I think a couple of years before COVID hit most cards had it, but many stores didn't support it. But once COVID came and visited, all stores got new TPVs that could read NFC very quickly.
Home Depot has also allowed this for lower-value items for several years.
There's Amazon's "just walk out" stuff, which they just killed.
But most retail tech in the US is suuuuper backwards. They were still signing credit card receipts until very recently. The way you pay for petrol/gas is bonkers.
Wait, what do you mean?
This is how it works for us: I go to the gas station, the pumps are locked by default, I await eye-contact with the person inside, wave at them, they unlock the pump, I pump the petrol, then I go in and pay.
I'm guessing it's radically different than that and involves signing papers somehow? Almost afraid to ask.
If you are paying cash, you generally have to go inside before pumping and prepay, and then go back inside afterwards to get your change, if applicable.
An increasing number of gas stations are completely unattended though — the attached store might close overnight but the pumps are still usable.
One time I went inside to buy a can to fill up, and I also paid upfront for a gallon, which made the pump cut off automatically.
I've never tried to pay for an unknown amount of gas with cash, and never felt any need to.
Amazon, 2023: please return to your Primehouse for your nightly Primemeal, valued Primecitizen
- krang t. nelson
Retailer apps are often surprisingly (expectably?) bad at dealing with spotty/no connectivity, and even if they aren't, getting my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, opening the right app, getting to the right screen in it (oh, did it just log me out?) etc. takes about 10x as long as arming my smartwatch in a convenient moment and tapping it once the terminal asks for it. It doesn't even require a free hand, since the range of mine is much better than that of passive contactless cards.
Amazon's app is just like what you describe. It is extraordinarily slow and needs a high-speed data network.
Why do you have so many hoops to jump through like presenting QR code and tapping watch
The reason why I did the QR code and watch tap thing prior to the palm thing is that I didn't want to carry a single-use credit card.
I'd love the functionality you're talking about. Do you remember how you set it up to get that? Would love to have my grocery card automatically recognized as being linked to a Prime membership.
At this point I presume they collect such biometrics whether I like it or not; they have cameras everywhere.
I really doubt getting a reasonably good image of my hand is tough for Amazon. But they don't really need my palm at all; most of the point of that was probably that it'd be much freakier to normies if the self-checkout just said "hi Bob!" when you got close via facial recognition.
> Then tying that to your identity is very hard and takes manhours…
That seems deeply unlikely. I'm probably on 50 different cameras at a Whole Foods, some of which I'd never notice, and at some point I have to check out, which ties all that footage to a credit card and my Prime account if I don't want to pay the non-deal prices for everything.
Apple's FaceID can figure out who you are even with a N95 mask and sunglasses on.
And in most scenarios, you're gonna a) pay with a card with your name on it and b) head out to your car with its unique ID prominently displayed on it.
Again, you can ditch your car but your biometric data will go into a pool that will be available to cross check against in perpetuity.
Pay cash every time and you're even more noticeable.
And then they start doing gait analysis or something, or use everyone's Ring camera to figure out where you come from.
That’s what the computers and cameras are for. Ring cameras happily use a LLM to describe people on your porch already.
Curious if they're keeping it at Whole Foods or discontinuing the hardware altogether? Can't say I've ever once seen someone actually use it to pay there.
I don’t see the point though. It is a payment solution in search of a problem. It is a nice bonus first party payment solution at Whole Foods though.
So when you wave your hand, you get your Prime discounts, you pay and you get your points. Just by waving your hand. No need to reach for a phone, an app, a card, scan a QR code, etc.
The tech had some advantages. I used it every time at WF. I liked it.
If this came around on 2010, it would have been a hit. Maybe even 2015. Now, it's simply redundant, or something more nefarious (but I can't imagine how).
The Amazon stores were the ultimate physical expression of this ideal. Walk into a store, pick up what you want, wave your hand vaguely at a scanner, leave. If they could have reliably gotten your ID without your involvement at all, they would've done that instead, but the hand scanner was the closest they could come.
There's nothing malicious about it. They just want you to be able to consume as easily as possible with as little friction or opportunities for second thoughts as possible.
It was convenient in Whole Foods. Prime discount and payment together. Remembering to keep the card on file updated was annoying, though.
And at CVS, I can use Google wallet to tap to use my loyalty card and pay. Amazon didn't have to invent a new thing.
The steps without using Amazon One were
* open the amazon app
* open the checkout thing
* click the QR code button
* click the amazon QR code
* Scan it
* Open Apple Wallet
* Pay
I hope that they will at least add the amazon QR code to apple wallet to make payment faster in store. That or something to make payment (with Amazon Prime link) as fast as with Amazon One even while not continuing Amazon One itself.
I wonder if they could use a NFC tag or something to quickly open the amazon app on your phone to pay or something?
As opposed to just wave your hand, to get your discounts, pay and get your points.
Why do you have all these steps to pay at a supermarket?
When I am here in the UK, I wave my phone over the card reader, it goes "Pling!" and that's my stuff paid for.
Of course, it's different elsewhere.
When I am over in Austria, I wave my phone over the card reader, it goes "Pling!" and that's my stuff paid for, but this time in Euros, at the going exchange rate.
A similar process is the case in the UK as well at Amazon Fresh stores, last I checked.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
I wish Amazon could sell the tech to someone more neutral and have it deployed more broadly.
But have no idea why anyone else would adopt this.
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.
Other things:
- Great for todo/reminders with timers
- "Hey Alexa, turn my lights on at 5 everyday, close them at 12"
- Not great at controlling Prime Video yet, can search it, but not great yet at all. Expecting this to be perfect at some point as well.
It's almost like a ... voice operating system.
This is not the worlds first biometric payments failure, as that belongs to PayByTouch, nor will it be the last. Having been deeply involved in the technology systems around the worlds first attempt at PayByTouch I do wonder why the "easy" is not embraced by more? I think I know however as it is likely religious in nature and the beliefs around such things. I can vividly recall being told to hide my employee badge while walking through the crowd of protesters holding signage about "Mark of the beast" and more in my attempts to enter the PayByTouch headquarters which used to reside at 1 Market in San Fran CA many years ago.
Wash, rinse, repeat : Everything old is new again. Just give it time as biometric payments will come around once again for absolute, third times a charm?
Do I trust the entity that identify me using biometrics ?
Do I trust it with my biometric data ?
If I link a payment method, do I trust it with access to my payment details ?
With Amazon Go at WF, I was fine to let Amazon know and store my hand biometrics, and I was fine enough with Amazon know what I purchase at WF, as long as I had something back (loyalty program).
Scaling this though would negatively impact the trust. Maybe I do not want Amazon to know "everything" I purchase everywhere (even though Visa/MC/Amex already know it...)
> The request could not be satisfied. Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
> Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront) Request ID: UoLb14OXMP21NeXt-jvgxvRHVY7LFDkZcFJU6hbH1xEsm4qqaOwD6g==
Lol
* The Bible book of "Revelations" is an accurate prediction of things that will happen exactly as described.
* Revelations predicts that in "the end times", it will become impossible to buy or sell anything without "the mark of the beast" on their forehead or right hand.
* The "mark of the beast" would be administered by the Antichrist.
From Revelations 13:16-17:
"And the second beast required all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name."
I grew up in an extremely religious part of the US with a large evangelical population, and I know firsthand that a lot of people believe that all of the above is literally, precisely true. It's exactly what I was taught in Sunday School as a kid. I do not believe this; please don't feel the need to tell me why these ideas are not true because I already agree with you. However, a lot of my family and old neighbors would 100% agree with all of the above statements.
And yet, they seemed to have no problem with buying stuff from Amazon with a palm print, or using Sam Altman's creepy Orb eye scanner thing. I'm genuinely surprised at how little fuss there was about them.
"Keep working! The next life - that's when it gets good!"