The launch of Amazon One in 2020 marked the beginning of biometric payment technology originally designed to simplify the checkout process for customers. But now the target group has grown and the company is increasingly targeting business customers. What makes this technology special?
• Increased focus on business customers with Amazon One Enterprise
• Hand scanner technology uses infrared light to capture palm features and vein patterns
• Amazon One emphasizes the importance of privacy and security, with data encrypted in the AWS Cloud
Amazon One
Amazon has taken a new direction to reach business customers with its advanced palm scanner technology. This strategic move expands the technology’s application beyond the retail sector and aims to provide businesses with an innovative solution to their security and authentication needs, the company reported in an online post.
The technology, known as Amazon One Enterprise, transforms Amazon’s established palm-based payment system into an authentication tool for the corporate sector, it said. This application allows employees to gain access to offices and access sensitive data such as financial information and personnel files with a simple wave of their hand. This approach offers a seamless integration of security and convenience into everyday business life. But what exactly is behind this technology?
This is how Amazon One works
Amazon One represents a significant innovation in biometric authentication, based on several key technologies and processes: Hand scanner technology says it uses a combination of biometric authentication and infrared light to capture, among other things, the unique characteristics of a palm. This includes not only the visible lines and grooves on the palm, but also the underlying vein pattern. By scanning these features, Amazon One creates a so-called palm signature, a unique numerical vector representation that is used for authentication and has numerous applications, such as accessing offices, accessing sensitive data or paying for purchases, it said.
The development and training of the Amazon One system was driven by the use of generative artificial intelligence and synthetic data. Generative AI models trained on billions of data points from books, articles, images and other sources have made it possible to generate millions of artificial images of palms, the company continued in an online post. These synthetic images formed the basis for training Amazon One’s AI model, achieving high accuracy and reliability. According to the company, the training also included recognizing variations such as different lighting conditions, hand positions and even the presence of bandages or jewelry. The system was also trained to recognize and reject fake hands, such as detailed silicone hand replicas.
One of the key challenges in developing Amazon One was the need to quickly and accurately identify users without first knowing who they are. Unlike a smartphone that knows its owner’s face and only confirms their identity, Amazon One must infer a person’s identity from a database of users and do so in real time, it said. This required high accuracy and speed in data processing.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Amazon also placed great emphasis on data protection when developing the hand scanner technology. The system operates outside the normal light spectrum and cannot accurately detect gender or skin color. Amazon One does not use palm information to identify a person, but only to associate a unique identity with a payment instrument, as the company emphasizes. The palm and vein images are immediately encrypted and sent to a highly secure zone in the AWS Cloud specifically designed for Amazon One.
Focus on business customers
Already, well-known companies such as IHG Hotels & Resorts, hub manufacturer Boon Edam and Kone, an escalator and elevator specialist, have integrated Amazon One’s biometric technology into their operations to benefit from an advanced authentication solution, CNBC said in an online post mentioned. Amazon One, however, has already been used for payment processes in Whole Foods, Amazon Go and Fresh supermarkets as well as in sports and entertainment venues, some Panera Bread restaurants and select Starbucks branches. According to TechCrunch, Amazon One has been deployed in more than 400 locations across the US since launching in 2020 and has reached more than 3 million usages.
The redesign of Amazon One for the enterprise sector is part of the company’s broader strategy to redesign existing technologies for different applications. A recent example of this is the unveiling of Astro for Business, an enterprise version of Amazon’s household robot designed as a mobile security solution for businesses, as CNBC points out.
Amazon highlights the benefits of Amazon One by highlighting the technology as an economical and more secure option compared to traditional security methods such as key fobs, ID cards or passwords. Dilip Kumar, vice president at Amazon Web Services Applications, highlights the privacy and convenience of allowing users to reach both physical locations and digital assets with a simple wave of their hand. Amazon One is already available in a preview version in the United States, although Amazon has not yet provided any specific pricing information.
Despite the practical applications of this technology, stakeholders have raised concerns about privacy and security, particularly the potential increase in surveillance. Amazon addresses these concerns by arguing that palm recognition is more confidential than other biometric systems because a person’s identity cannot be determined solely from an image of their palm. The company also assures that it does not collect purchase data from scans in non-Amazon stores, it concludes.
D. Maier / editorial team finanzen.net
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