Amazon is looking to make it easier for shoppers to sign up for its biometric security service that allows for moneyless purchases.
The company has launched a new mobile app for its Amazon One technology, allowing users to scan their palms at home in order to register for the service before they visit a store.
Launched in September 2020, Amazon One uses a palm recognition biometric scan to allow users to register purchases at hundreds of Whole Foods Market locations, as well as Amazon's own stores and more than 150 third-party other outlets.
Amazon One mobile app
In a blog post outlining the news, the company explained how the new Amazon One app lets customers create an online profile by logging into their existing Amazon account on their device, then taking a photo of their palm, and adding a payment method, all within the app.
Previously, users would have needed to visit a store and hover their palm over an Amazon One device to sign up for the service.
Amazon says the new app is backed up by some powerful new generative AI capabilities that combine the phone's camera image with Amazon One's own library. This means that a camera phone photo can be matched with the near-infrared imagery from an Amazon One device, allowing for a secure and accurate match.
The service is able to create a "palm signature" by examining both a user's palm and its underlying vein structure, building a unique numerical, vector representation that the company says is "99.9999%" accurate.
Once complete, the AI system is able to compare and match the palm and vein imagery captured by the in-store Amazon One device when a user hovers their hand over it, with that registered via a phone photo, and completes the registration.
The company says all images taken via the new app are encrypted and sent to a secure Amazon One domain in the AWS cloud, and the images cannot be downloaded or saved to your phone, so there's no danger of them being leaked accidentally, with the app also offering "additional layers of spoof detection".
The new Amazon One app is available from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store now.
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