It’s a first in Europe. Payment with the palm of the hand is arriving in a French supermarket chain.
Contactless payment or payment with a mobile phone is now commonplace. It saves time by not typing in your code for the first and the second avoids having to carry your card with you. And what if soon neither one nor the other were necessary? Payment with the palm of the hand is starting to be tested and is slowly emerging. Already implemented by Amazon in the United States in Whole Foods, a test is being launched in France in a large supermarket chain.
The principle is to associate the handprint with a bank account. During this test, customers will be able to record their fingerprint on a terminal and then associate it with their bank card. Once this maneuver is done, they will only have to pass their hand over a payment terminal to validate their purchases.
The system used will be that of the company Ingenico, which has been offering biometric transactions for several years. It uses infrared sensors to analyze the blood flow of the hand to identify it.
The aim is to improve the checkout experience, according to Alexandre Bompard, head of the Carrefour group, in a press release, reported by BFMTV. This process is being tested in the Carrefour Market Paris Seine store, located in the 6th arrondissement, from July 29. The date was not chosen at random, since it falls shortly after the start of the Olympic Games and could therefore help to smooth out the checkout process in this supermarket in the capital.
This payment method may be worrying from a security point of view. The Carrefour press release highlighted “very strong security” of personal and banking data. The company Ingenico has, for its part, assured that “each person has a unique vein pattern in their palm, palm vein identification is one of the most accurate and secure biometric technologies in the world. It is less intrusive and more secure than other alternatives, such as fingerprints and facial recognition.” It remains to be seen whether customers will adhere to this method so that it can then be deployed in other Carrefour stores and even extended to the various French supermarket chains.