Covid-19 is taking back control over our society with increasing daily infections. We thought the hard part was over but we are now in the second Covid-19 wave. New measures have been taken and companies are having difficulties adopting to these measures and the social distancing. In the era of Covid-19, different companies are trying to use technology to find solutions to navigate this pandemic.
Amazon, known for its unusual inventions like Alexa and the Amazon Go stores, introduced a new biometric technology called Amazon One. Amazon One allows shoppers to pay at stores when they walk in the or when they check out by only placing their palm of their hand over a scanning device. To use this payment option for the first time, the customer has to scan their palm and connect it to their payment card at a terminal. After that, the customers can use their palm to pay. As easy as said. To make the system as accurate as possible, the camera in the scanner takes multiple images of the fine lines and ridges of the palm of the customers hand and captures some not visible details, such as veins. This feature will first be only available at two Amazon Go stores in Seattle. But Amazon plans to add it to more Amazon Go stores and eventually sell it to other retailers, offices and stadiums in the future.
This is a perfect timing for Amazon as we are living in times where social distancing and contact free payment technology is extremely convenient. Customers may find this contact-free payment technology appealing and easy. But are customers willing to hand over biometric data? Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, said the company is not storing any information and all palm images are encrypted and stored online. Another Amazon spokesperson said the company will not use the transaction information for Amazon advertising of other purposes. But will this really protect the customers privacy? It’s true that a contact free payment method is more attractive now, during the pandemic. But new payment methods often face adoption challenges. And now especially with the biometric tracking posing a lot of privacy concerns.
Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint tech and its Face ID face tech was also a crazy idea and had a lot of critics, but most customers use it now at a daily base. Would you use this new payment technology? Or do you just prefer to pay the old fashioned way?
References:
- https://digitalstrategy.rsm.nl//2020/09/26/how-covid-19-is-speeding-up-disruption-in-the-film-industry/
- https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/29/tech/amazon-one-palm-payment/index.html
- https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/29/21492351/amazon-one-hand-scan-payments-palm-checkout-whole-foods
Hi Kirra,
Thank you for your interesting post and thoughts on this new innovation by Amazon!
To start with your questions, I would personally indeed be willing to use this new technology, especially if convenient places like Albert Heijn would install these terminals at their self-scan cashier machines. Furthermore, I do think that Amazon One could become a real player in the payment service industry, in a similar fashion in which Apple entered the market.
Furthermore, I think that you are spot on with stating that the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its new measures of yesterday, have an impact on the expectations that consumers have of future innovations. As the touching of surfaces, screens, and numbered buttons on card reader devices becomes less popular, I indeed think that many people start using contactless alternatives. However, it is also seen that Apple Pay (and Google Pay via Android) already provide consumers with a solution on how not to touch these card reader devices.
Perhaps however, people are still not willing to touch their phones, given that they might have touched any other surfaces in the shop, and therefore still want to sanitise their hands first. I am therefore interested in your opinion: do you think that COVID-19 would indeed add additional reasons for using Amazon One over Apple Pay and Google Pay via this logic?
At last, I would like to move this conversation forward by discussing the competitive landscape of this recent innovation. This, because I do think that competitors will be quick to follow with competing products in the near future. Apple for example launched their fingerprint technology (i.e. “Touch ID”) already in 2013 with the iPhone 5S, and later launched their facial recognition technology (i.e. “Face ID”) with the iPhone X in 2017 (The Verge, 2019). Given that these ‘recognition’-based software systems are quite comparable to the ‘hand-recognition’ software of Amazon, and given that these software systems of Apple are already used for making payments via Apple Pay, I do believe that Apple is going to react on Amazon with the launch of a competing offering.
To end this comment, I am interested in hearing your opinion on the competitive landscape of Amazon One. First of all, do you think that scanning a hand with indeed be the most convenient way for people to pay? Or would you rather prefer to keep using Touch-ID or Face-ID? Second, do you also think that companies like Apple and Google will be quick to react to Amazon and compete in this interesting market? Who do you think that will end up with the dominant technology?
Looking forward to hear your thoughts!
Kind regards,
Jan Clerkx
Sources:
The Verge (2019) Apple’s iPhone will have an in-display fingerprint sensor in 2021, analyst claims [Online] Assessed on 29-09-2020, via: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/5/20754520/iphone-in-display-fingerprint-sensor-touch-id-2021-iphones-face-id-biometric-security-rumors
Hi Kirra,
I think it’s a super interesting topic, and I hadn’t read or heard anything about this new technology myself. Thank you for writing this blog post.
At first I definitely think it is a good way and solution in these crazy uncertain COVID-19 times. After all, you don’t have to touch anything or anyone anymore while paying, this reduces the risk of contamination and spread. But on the other hand, to what extent would it matter in terms of spread and contamination if you only touch your own wallet and cards? nowadays there is already a lot of cash-less payment, where people only have to scan their own card to successfully complete a payment.
Personally, I would like to use this Amazon One. I now also use the Face ID and fingerprint tech on my phone, and see this new technology as a kind of extension to the ones I already use. Obviously I understand the opposition around privacy concerns, but personally I think that (just like with the fingerprint and face id technologies) there is some resistance against this new technology in the beginning, but this will disappear as soon as the majority of the population embraces the Amazon One.
Regarding the privacy violation, I am also of the opinion that this must be taken into account and clear agreements and regulations must be observed. But for me this does not only apply to these kinds of new technologies, also to all other ways in which data is generated via smartphones, etc. Companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook already have far too much power in my opinion, I think that stricter laws and regulations from the government must be set up for this.
I am very curious if you would use the Amazon One device, so please let me know!
Kind regards,
Kiki Lagerweij