Amazon has launched an app which lets customers sign up for its palm recognition payment service using their phone instead of visiting a physical location.

Amazon One uses palm recognition to enable users to pay for services and identify themselves by hovering their palm over a compatible device.

The e-commerce giant said that the app will speed up registration as first-time users of Amazon One will no longer require additional time to sign up at checkout.

Customers can create an online profile by logging into their Amazon account, talking a photo of their palms and adding a payment method. Once signed up, customers can use the service for payment, age verification and loyalty rewards.

Over 500 Whole Foods Market stores in the US offer payment using Amazon One along with several Amazon stores.

There are also over 150 third-party locations including stadiums, airports, fitness centres and convenience stores which implement the technology.

Amazon claims the service has been used more than eight million times since it launched in September 2020, with over 80 per cent of shoppers using the service repeatedly.

Dilip Kumar, vice president AWS Applications, said it was developed using generative AI to create synthetic palm images to train learning models. The technology was also used to match the camera phone photo with the Amazon One device.

“Amazon One looks at both your palm and its underlying vein structure to create a unique numerical, vector representation—called a palm signature—for identity matching,” Kumar said. “To ensure Amazon One continues to deliver the same accuracy – 99.9999 per cent – our new AI innovation compares vector representations of palm images from the Amazon One app with the vector representation of palm and vein images from an Amazon One device.

“This allows us to confirm that the person hovering their palm over the Amazon One device is the same who signed up for the service using the app.”

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