Amazon One allows palm payments for alcohol

The service will use your palm print and selfie to verify your age, with the first use at Coors Field in Colorado.

Amazon One, the retailer’s palm-scanning payment technology, is now gaining new functionality with the addition of age verification services. Customers using Amazon One devices will be able to buy adult beverages just by hovering their palm over the Amazon One device. The first venue to support this feature will be Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies MLB team. The technology will roll out to additional venues in the next months.

“We’re solving that customer pain point and improving the guest experience with the launch of a new capability called "age verification," which enables adult customers ages 21 and over to purchase alcoholic beverages by simply hovering their palm over an Amazon One device,” says the Amazon in a press release.

First introduced in 2020, Amazon’s biometric payment technology works by creating a unique palm print for each customer, which Amazon associates with a credit card the customer inserts in the sign-up kiosk upon initial setup, or with a card the customer has configured online in advance.

Amazon says its palm-scanning technology uses cameras to match “multiple aspects of your palm,” including lines, ridges, and veins to the photos you provide to the service, which it stores in its cloud. This in itself could pose privacy and security risks, but Amazon maintains that users’ palm recognition data is safe.