Amazon to link customer’s credit card information to their HAND prints

Amazon is reportedly working to create payment terminals where shoppers can connect their credit card information to their hand print, allowing them to check out from brick-and-mortar stores with a wave.

The multi-billion dollar company plans to offer services to fast-food restaurants, coffee shops and other places that have frequent repeat customers, the Wall Street Journal reports. The plans for the terminals are in the early stages, but Amazon began working with Visa Inc. to test transactions on the terminals and is in discussions with Mastercard Inc.

WSJ says that Amazon imagines customers linking their debit or credit cards information to checkout terminals and then letting the devices scan their hands.

The company is said to be weighing options on to successfully implement the method, including customers inserting their card into a terminal and then allowing their hands to be scanned.

After that, customers would only need to place their hands over the checkout terminal to purchase items. Amazon recently filed a patent for a ‘non-contact biometric identification system’ that incorporates ‘a hand scanner that generates images of a user’s palm.’

Amazon’s latest alleged venture marks another instance of big tech wading into the financial industry.

Apple began offering Apple Pay, a service that allows customers to pay with a NFC chip on their phone or wallet, in 2014 and the company introduced a credit card last year. In November 2019, Google announced plans to create checking accounts for users in partnership with Citigroup and Stanford Federal Credit Union.