Amazon's Contactless Payments Greeted With Twitter Wariness, Support
Reactions to Amazon’s latest shopping tack -- contactless payments via scanned palms -- ranged from wariness to zeal on Twitter Tuesday. Amazon One launched Tuesday in two Seattle-area Amazon Go stores. Amazon described the service as a “fast, convenient” way to use palms to pay, present a loyalty card, enter a stadium or "badge" into work.
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It's designed to be “highly secure and uses custom-built algorithms and hardware to create a person’s unique palm signature,” the company blogged. To sign up, customers insert a credit card into the reader, then hover either one or both palms over the device for “a second or so” to associate the payment card with the palm signature being created by Amazon computer vision technology. “The continued blending of #technology and #identity via #amazonone,” tweeted @riodjomama. “I wonder if it matters to businesses if consumers have reservations about this.”
On data security and privacy, Amazon said sensitive data is “treated in accordance with our long-standing policies.” Amazon One is protected by “multiple security controls.” Palm images are “never stored on the Amazon One device” and are encrypted and sent to a “highly secure area we custom-built in the cloud where we create your palm signature." Palm recognition is considered more private than some biometric alternatives: “You can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm,” said the company. The technology requires someone to make an “intentional gesture” by holding their palm over the device to use.
Twitter user @bretnohlan questioned Amazon One’s utility: “Why do they invent this palm reader if we can already use our mobiles to pay without having to touch a surface? If my hand is injured it can also cause an error,” he tweeted: “They don't realize that they are making a useless invention.” TechCrunch questioned the timing, bringing out a service that required consumers to use their hands during a pandemic.
Others were appreciative of the next-gen payment option. @robertson_codes praised the “thoughtfulness put into the design.” He liked that Amazon One is contactless, requires an intentional gesture, can’t be used to identify an individual and doesn’t require that a user have an Amazon account. @ASMRdestiny liked the idea of Amazon One but wondered about practicality: “It means retailers will need a separate POS device to scan your palm,” he said of the point-of-sale hardware: “I wonder how many places will actually do that?” @C_Zatt would have appreciated the feature a few days ago when he forgot his credit card at the supermarket and couldn’t pay: “What a bad situation. This @amazon One would be a nice feature," he said.
Some were curious. @HydrogenAPI wondered if Amazon One will replace a smartphone’s virtual wallet. @matthew_attwell, who's “excited to try Amazon One,” was interested from a payments view about uptake, since it can only be used in physical channels. Attwell wondered if customers prefer using an omnichannel mechanism as their “go-to choice.” Trust in Amazon’s use of data “could be a deal breaker too.”
Beyond Amazon Go, the retailer expects to add Amazon One as an option in other company stores in coming months. It believes the technology has “broad applicability beyond our retail stores, so we also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places.” Customers at the Seattle Amazon Go stores will have the option to use existing payments options: the Amazon Go or Amazon app, or via associate for customers paying in cash, Amazon said.