Thanks to French technology, you will soon no longer need to use your bank card or smartphone to pay at the checkout in this store: the palm of your hand will suffice!
Since Covid and the panic fear of touching a contaminated surface that resulted from it, many consumers have gotten into the habit of paying contactless, with a bank card or smartphone. And it is clear that this saves considerable time and reduces long queues at the checkout. But we are always looking for lighter, faster and safer ways to pay for our purchases. And the most promising option seems to be nothing less than the palm of our hand. It would be practical: no risk of losing or forgetting it, a few seconds would be enough to pay for our shopping. We could pay at any time without having to take anything with us!
This scenario, which just a few years ago seemed like something straight out of a science fiction novel, will become reality on July 29th, in the Carrefour Market Paris Seine store, in the 6th arrondissement of the capital. Indeed, the brand will experiment with the technology of the French company Ingenico, a major player in the payment terminal sector – it is currently behind one in three payment terminals in the world.
The latter aims to use biometric data from hand veins to facilitate the in-store payment process. In concrete terms, “guinea pig” customers will only have to position their hand ten centimeters from a payment terminal equipped with a scanner to pay for their purchases. Magic!
This technology is based on palm recognition. The principle is simple. A machine scans the hand using an infrared sensor, analyzing its blood flow to establish its venous pattern. It then associates this unique pattern – it is specific to each person, like fingerprints – with a bank card, in the form of a series of numbers. A process described as the most secure, since the palm of the hand would be the most secure element from a biometric point of view, ahead of the iris or the fingerprint.
The objective is to “make the checkout process smoother and [d’]improve the customer journey”Carrefour explains in a press release. The brand insists on “very strong security” linked to personal and banking data, and plans to take advantage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – of which it is a major partner – to experiment with the technology.
Note that Amazon offers the same type of service in the United States with Amazon One, an application that allows American consumers to register directly through their smartphone to pay for their purchases with a simple hand movement in its stores. France is however not concerned for the moment.