Meet Amazon One, a new contactless payment service that uses palm recognition

Amazon on Wednesday announced the launch of Amazon One, a quick, reliable and highly-secure payment service that uses palm recognition to authorize a transaction.

The contactless service lets people use their palm to pay, enter, or identify themselves. The Amazon One device uses custom-built imaging and computer vision algorithms to evaluate multiple aspects of a palm and select the most distinct identifiers to create a unique palm signature for each individual using it.

"Amazon One is a fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to make everyday activities like paying at a store, presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium, or badging into work more effortless," Amazon wrote in a blog post.

"Your palm consists of multiple layers of distinguishing features that make it the safe, easy and most convenient choice for your Amazon One ID," says Amazon.

Amazon says the device is protected by on-device and cloud-based security measures and the palm images are never stored on the Amazon One device. Users can request to delete data associated with Amazon One through the device itself or via the online customer portal at one.amazon.com.

Starting today, the Amazon One is available for use at two of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, U.S. The device will be added as an option in additional Amazon stores in the coming months. Furthermore, Amazon announced its plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings.

How to sign up?

To sign up to the system, follow these steps:

• Insert your credit card
• Hover your palm over the Amazon One device. You'll have the option to enroll with just one palm or both
• Follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature.
• And you are done!

Once you are signed up, you can use Amazon One wherever it is available. All you have to do is to hold your palm above the Amazon One device for about a second and that's it, you can be on your way.