Global Courant
The device captures an infrared image of the palm of the hand, identifies the user by the distinctive pattern of their veins and processes their payment in approximately one second.
But Jeff Bezos’s company is not a pioneer in applying this biometric technology, which has been growing strongly in East Asia for years.
Major airports in South Korea save time for accredited passengers by scanning their palms, and local governments in Japan implement this system to securely identify their residents.
The technology known as “palm biometrics” generated US$1.06 billion in 2022 and is estimated to reach US$3.72 billion by 2028, according to a study published by the market research consultancy IMARC.
Getty Images A Chinese company exhibits this technology at an artificial intelligence fair in 2021 in Shanghai.
Biometrics is already part of our lives: every time we unlock our smartphone we use this technology, although it is not yet 100% implemented in other devices and facilities such as supermarkets, restaurants, residential complexes, hotels or airports.
And, in full expansion of biometrics to more facets of life, the recognition of the palm of the hand is considered a new and solid alternative, according to experts.
We explain some advantages that it can offer compared to the most used methods today, such as fingerprints or facial recognition.
1. Security
Forging a fingerprint or fooling a facial recognition system is not easy, but it is not impossible either.
In the case of fingerprints, there have been many attempts with varying degrees of success, from latex molds to 3D printing, and photographs have also been used to circumvent facial recognition systems.
Replicating the pattern of the veins that a person has on the inside of their hand is much more difficult.
“These patterns are different for each finger and in each person; And since they are hidden below the surface of the skin, counterfeiting them is extremely difficult,” Basel Halak, a researcher from the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computing, told the BBC.
For example, a well-marked fingerprint on a doorknob could be extracted by specialists and replicated in a mold, something impossible in the case of palm recognition, whose veins are under the skin and are protected. by multiple layers of tissue.
Getty Images Fingerprint identification systems are becoming more advanced, but they are far from perfect.
Even if a sophisticated criminal accessed the exact data on the vein pattern in a person’s hand and managed to replicate it on a life-size model, the scanner would probably detect that it is not a real organ because it lacks blood flow.
Thus, this technology is considered a promising alternative in situations that require accurate and reliable identification, such as access to restricted areas or payment authentication.
Experts and defenders of this new technology also ensure that it better protects the privacy of users: unlike fingerprints and, above all, facial recognition, it identifies through an invisible pattern.
“You can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of the palm of their hand,” Halak alleges.
2. Consistency
Our fingerprints do not vary throughout life.
But they can deteriorate due to aging, skin conditions or certain physical activities, making them difficult to recognize and causing detectors to fail.
Getty Images Footprints wear down with age, among other factors.
In the case of facial recognition, appearance changes that a person may experience throughout life – for example, plastic surgery procedures, beards or tattoos – also complicate authentication.
This is not the case with palm recognition systems, whose vein patterns are extremely complex and unique to each individual; and, above all, they are not altered by external factors in the course of life.
“Compared to other forms of identifiers, this form of biometric authentication is based on physical characteristics that remain constant throughout life,” says the academic.
3. Precision
High accuracy is another advantage of palm vein recognition technology.
Fingerprints with hardly any relief, dirty hands or incorrectly positioning fingers frequently cause failures in the detection devices.
Also the use of glasses, masks and other accessories make facial recognition difficult.
By using infrared rays, hand vein recognition scanners ensure greater accuracy and avoid false positives or negatives.
Getty Images High precision is another advantage of this technology.
The Japanese company Fujitsu published a study in April in which it ensures that the false positive rate of its palm recognition system reached a ratio of only 8 per 100 million scans, and 1 per 10,000.
In the case of fingerprint detection and facial recognition systems, these ratios vary depending on the quality of the devices and other factors, but many of them have error rates of between 0.1% and 1%, much higher than those offered by Fujitsu, and which the BBC could not independently verify.
4. Hygiene
The covid-19 pandemic has changed the world’s perception of personal hygiene.
Day-to-day actions such as touching a handrail, pressing an elevator button or turning a doorknob cause many people concerned about the transmission of viruses and bacteria to object.
In this sense, the recognition of the veins of the palm of the hand is considered as a hygienic alternative to fingerprints in biometric identification.
This, according to experts, can make certain institutions and corporations opt for this technology, for example hospitals – where hygienic protocols are extreme to avoid contagion – or companies where food is handled or a high density of workers is concentrated.
The critics
This new technology has also been criticized.
When Amazon announced its new palm-based payment system, user privacy advocacy organization Big Brother Watch disagreed.
“Amazon continues to take over the market with invasive and dystopian technologies that solve non-existent problems,” said its director, Silkie Carlo.
“No one should have to provide biometric data to purchase goods or services. Amazon’s attempt to normalize biometric payment and home surveillance devices risks building a world where we are easier to track and record, which will inevitably disempower citizens,” she said.
Of course, being a more sophisticated technology that is not yet widely used, it also means increased costs, experts say.
Many of them trust, in any case, that this branch of biometrics will continue to evolve and the different industries will gradually adopt it.
In the coming years we will know if it is consolidated or not as a real alternative to the current identification methods.
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