Global Developments Around Palm Vein Authentication

While, as individuals, we all use fingerprint biometrics in our routine life to unlock a phone or the door to the office, verify identities, and gain access to restricted areas, the tech giants have a different agenda. Various cases have been reported globally using palm vein technology for payments in the last few months.

Developments in China

China’s social media giant Tencent Technologies (WeChat) officially launched Palm Pay in the country, enabling consumers to conveniently make payments using their palm prints on face recognition devices.

In a pilot project, a subway line linking downtown Beijing with Daxing International Airport in the Chinese capital now allows passengers to enter and exit stations by scanning the palm of a hand.

The users enrolled in the palm-recognition service can pay for rides on the Daxing Airport Express Line by holding their hands over a scanner at metro station turnstiles. The system allows them to authenticate their transactions by scanning and uploading their palm prints to a ticket machine. They can then link these checked prints to their personal phone number and ID through the WeChat mini programme, enabling them to initiate payments.

Tencent’s AI lab, YouTu, which has developed this technology, plans to gradually roll out palm payments in other settings, including offices, campuses, retail outlets, and restaurants.

With this, China sets an example of how palm vein biometric authentication in public transportation can make commuting more convenient. However, the new payment method drew heated discussions on social media, as many netizens have grown increasingly privacy-conscious in a country where biometric data theft is a common occurrence and facial recognition payments have been available for years.

Development in other regions

Companies like Fujitsu have been developing technology around palm vein authentication for a long time. Recently, the company developed a technology for enabling standard smartphone cameras to authenticate palms.

Security Systems Technology has implemented palm vein biometric authentication by Fujitsu (PalmSecure) for Hiscox London Market, a division of the Bermuda-based insurer that underwrites international businesses via Lloyd’s of London. The PalmSecure readers have been installed as a security protocol to authenticate employee access.

Globally, other big tech companies have also been developing palm payments. Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce firm, is working on similar technology for its competing Alipay service. In the US, e-commerce giant Amazon has been slowly rolling out its palm-based biometric authentication system since 2019. It is preparing the first significant expansion across the US and will roll out to 500-plus Whole Foods locations by the end of 2023.

Amazon One works by the user scanning their palm above a reader — in other words, it’s another form of contactless biometric authentication, like Apple’s Face ID. But instead of reading your face, Amazon One reads the lines and ridges of your palm and the unique vein patterns beneath it. Amazon claims palms are a more secure biometric identifier than fingerprints or faces, but it remains to be seen whether customers will trust Amazon with any biometric data.

While out of all the biometric identifiers, fingerprints have been used the longest – probably since the 1800s – newer biometrics, such as facial and iris recognition and retinal scans, were only possible once technological advances were able to make devices that could process these identifiers. Palm vein authentication offers several advantages, such as high authentication accuracy and minimal risk of being stolen or duplicated. This is due to the fact that palm veins are concealed inside the hand, whereas biometrics such as facial recognition are exposed for the whole world to see..

Palm vein scanning is a relatively new technology for biometrics-based personal identification. Although it is not yet as well-known as facial recognition or finger scan technologies, its reliability should allow it to quickly gain more attention and acceptance.