Imagine not needing cash, a card, or your phone to pay. Only your hand. It is called palm recognition technology and that method of payment is already here at every Whole Foods in the Valley.
“As far as hand print scanning and other biometrics like eye scanning, it’s definitely the way of the future,” tech expert Burton Kelso said.
The palm recognition system is called Amazon One. “With biometrics, one of the things that’s great is that your information is tied to you,” Kelso said. “Only one set of eyes, that matches your identity.
Same thing with your fingerprints, same thing with palm recognition and facial recognition, so that’s a good thing.”
Customers we spoke with were split. “It just makes the transition out of the grocery store a lot faster,” Daniel Welsh said. “It’s a little bit scary. I love technology, so I decided to check it out.”
“I don’t feel comfortable it’s just grocery shopping,” Cesar Martinez said. “Why would you scan your finger or eyes or anything to buy groceries?”
“It freaks me out,” Andrea Chavez said. “I’m not going to say that I’m not going to do it maybe sometime for convenience. But it freaks me out.”
“Part of the fear that people may see is that someone may cut off a limb like you see in the movies in order to pay for stuff,” Kelso said. “But that isn’t going to happen. For the most part, your biometric data is safe and is going to make the future of transactions a lot easier to deal with.”
Kelso says it is easier to hack your accounts online that have passwords. So while paying for items will become a breeze in the future, it could become more difficult to teach our children about the value of money.
“With automatic payment systems, it really is hard to teach children how to value their money,” Kelso said. “You already see that with credit cards and debit cards.” Panera, some airports, and stadiums across the country now have palm reading technology.
