Carrefour to accept palm payments

A French retail giant has come up with a little innovation on the subject of payment. Carrefour will soon be accepting payments via palm vein recognition in one of its Paris stores. To renew the shopping experience for its customers, Carrefour is relying on Ingenico, one of Europe's leading technology providers.

FACTS

• Carrefour and Ingenico have entered into a partnership to test a palm-recognition payment solution in one of the retail chain's stores in Paris, the Carrefour Market Paris Seine.
• The trial is due to start on July 29. It will enable customers to pay by recording the unique vein pattern of their hand on a dedicated terminal installed in the store. They will then be able to associate their palm print with their means of payment.
• Technically, Ingenico presents the technology as a solution capable of recognizing and exploiting the unique vascular patterns of a person's palm to authenticate their identity. For consumers, access to this technology is a 4-step process:
• customers register their palm veins and associate them with their in-store payment credentials,
• they can then place their hand over a palm vein sensor installed at store checkouts to be recognized,
• their hand scan is then compared with the encrypted biometric data stored in the system,
• A match validates the payment.
• The system is currently being tested in the Carrefour Market Paris Seine store.

CHALLENGES

• Facilitating payment: The biometric technology developed by Ingenico captures the vein patterns of the hand to enable contactless transactions without even having to present a bank card. The primary aim is to simplify the payment process and speed up checkouts.
• Securing payment: Carrefour believes that the system deployed ensures a very high level of security for personal banking data, without giving any further details. However, Ingenico points out that as the veins are internal, they remain less sensitive to wear and tear and environmental influences, offering a higher level of security. They also provide enhanced security thanks to the uniqueness of each individual's vein patterns.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Although palm recognition payments are being rolled out through initiatives such as Carrefour's today, the model remains uncommon. Nonetheless, Ingenico is helping to roll it out both nationally and internationally. The multinational payment services company has just announced its participation in a pilot program for the deployment of this payment method in Uruguay.
• In the rest of the world, it's mainly Amazon that is setting the standard for the democratization of palm recognition payments. The web giant has indeed stepped up its initiatives in recent years, via Amazon One. The solution can now be used for payments (in Whole Foods stores in particular), access control, age verification and rewards in Amazon's partner stores.