Biometrics for retail payments rolled out by Amazon, Sberbank, FPC

Amazon is bringing its palm biometric payment system to Whole Foods stores, according to a report by CNBC.

Amazon One was first introduced in Amazon’s physical stores last September, allowing shoppers to link their palm print biometrics to a credit card, then use it to pay in-store using the scanner.

Now, the online retail giant has deployed Amazon One at Whole Foods in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, with seven more stores in the Seattle area planned for the coming months.

The palm biometric technology will be added to other, existing payment options, and Amazon said it has already been used by thousands of people in Amazon stores.

Amazon began expanding its deployments of palm biometric payments in February, when the company announced a rollout of the palm scanner in its Seattle-area Go stores, with the goal of rolling out the technology more broadly.

Whole Foods was acquired by Amazon in 2017 for roughly $13 billion. The deployment of biometric technology to validate payments will now make the experience more user-friendly for many customers.

However, as it often is the case with biometric applications, concerns have been voiced by privacy advocates, and Amazon has already been under scrutiny for allegedly failing to obtain necessary consent to use customers’ biometric data.

Sberbank rolls out facial recognition payments

Sberbank and grocery chain Magnit plan to launch face biometrics for payments to 100 grocery stores in the cities of Moscow and Krasnodar by June, Reuters reports, in an expansion from a 10-store pilot.

The biometric technology enables “mind-boggling services” which will spur adoption, Sberbank CEO German Gref says, while Magnit Director of Retail Technologies Eduard Iryshkov said it reduces payment times from 34 seconds for cash and 15 seconds for payment cards to only 3 seconds.

Sberbank launched a trial of fingerprint biometrics for payments with a different grocery store chain in 2019, and VisionLabs, which in which Sberbank acquired a 25 percent stake in 2017, began providing its face biometrics to another grocery chain earlier this year.

Fingerprint Cards-enabled payment card reaches commercial launch

Crédit Agricole France’s Gold and World Elite customers can now order biometric payment cards, in the third commercial launch of a product featuring a biometric sensor from Fingerprint Cards.

Fingerprint Cards’ technology is also integrated into cards in 23 bank pilots, according to a company Tweet. Crédit Agricole launched its trial of the cards, made in collaboration with G+D Mobile Security, NXP Semiconductors and Mastercard, back in 2019.

Article Topics

Amazon  |  biometric cards  |  biometric payments  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  fingerprint sensors  |  palm recognition  |  retail biometrics  |  secure transactions