Amazon released a new mobile app for its Amazon One palm-recognition technology, letting users sign up for the service on their phones by taking a photo of their palm to register it for later use for entry, identification and payment.
Up to this point, the initial signup and palm registration has been limited to in-store kiosks. Amazon says the ability to sign up separately on the app in advance is meant to make the experience smoother for first-time users.
In a post Thursday morning, Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon Web Services Applications, says the Amazon One app includes a new AI capability that can match an image from a camera phone with the near-infrared palm and vein imagery captured by an Amazon One device in a store or other venue:
Amazon One looks at both your palm and its underlying vein structure to create a unique numerical, vector representation—called a palm signature—for identity matching. To ensure Amazon One continues to deliver the same accuracy (99.9999%), our new AI innovation compares vector representations of palm images from the Amazon One app with the vector representation of palm and vein images from an Amazon One device. This allows us to confirm that the person hovering their palm over the Amazon One device is the same who signed up for the service using the app.
The app is available for iOS and Android.
Amazon last year rolled out Amazon One to more than 500 U.S. Whole Foods stores. It’s also used in Amazon Go stories and more than 150 third-party locations such as stadiums, airports, and convenience stores.
The technology prompted a backlash at Red Rock Amphitheatre outside of Denver in 2022.
Addressing privacy issues, Amazon says it “will never share palm data with third parties, under any circumstance, including in response to government demands, unless we’re required to comply with a legally valid and binding order.”
The company said Thursday that Amazon One has been used more than 8 million times, noting that more than 80% of people who use the service at Whole Foods and Amazon stores end up as recurring users.
Amazon last year started offering a version of Amazon One for building access and corporate security.
