Ant Group applies for palm biometrics patent for retail purchases

A fintech holding of Alibaba has filed a software patent application in China protecting palm biometrics for retail purchases.

Ant Group, a segment of Alibaba, wants to push palm recognition into the Chinese market and elsewhere. The news comes from the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.

Alibaba makes related hardware, too.

BioID Technologies, a sensor competitor also in China, in January was certified for meeting reliability and image quality standards by the United States’ FBI. And China-based DeepBlue Technology, another Alibaba competitor, reportedly has had palm systems on autonomous buses since 2018.

An entry in the TianYanCha, a China-based business database startup not broadly available in all markets, describes Ant’s product as one that captures palmprints after a payment request is made.

Matches are sought from a database reportedly created from biometric scans submitted (as opposed to captured without permission) previously.

The Morning Post says many devices could do the scanning – a phone, digital book reader or even a virtual reality system.

The article notes the upswing in palm systems, particularly from Amazon, even as what investment money is flowing is heading for facial recognition.

One, Amazon’s palm scanning unit, this spring began verifying ages for liquor purchases.

Amazon claims that it does not store customers’ government-issued IDs, which it says are run through an ISO 27001-certified identity verifier.

Article Topics

Alibaba Group  |  biometric payments  |  palm biometrics  |  patents  |  research and development