Startup trials POS palm payments

A Chicago startup has built a biometrics-based payments system that lets people make purchases by holding their hands over a scanner at the point-of-sale.

  23 6 comments

Startup trials POS palm payments

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

To sign up for the Keyo system, shoppers create an account online, receive a registration code and then visit a retail location with one of the firm's terminals to enter the code and map the unique blood vessel patterns in their palms.

They can then add cards and make purchases at participating retailers by waving their hands over the Keyo terminals and then selecting the payment method. An online and app-based dashboard lets customers view their purchases, manage their cards and receive rewards.



The service has been built by husband and wife Jaxon Klein and Cayetana Polanco, along with friend Delna Sepoy Straus, using hardware from Fujitsu, which has been using biometric vein technology for ATMs in Japan for several years.

According to local news site Chicago Inno, the system is currently being tested with a couple of Chicago retailers, with plans afoot for a wider beta involving 30 sites, charging a flat one per cent fee on transactions.

Klein tells Chicago Inno: "We really see a future without keys, cards, wallets, IDs and tickets."

Keyo is far from the first firm to investigate biometric-based POS payments. Earlier this London music venue Proud Camden took the wraps off a similar system, called FingoPay, from biometric company Sthalerm, while India's Yes Bank has built a POS device that uses iris scanning technology.

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Comments: (6)

A Finextra member 

Doing one-to-many matching is "challenging", mildly speaking - scaleability IS a huge issue. Then there is a question of template storage in the cloud - that's illegal in Europe (USA will likely follow).

A Finextra member 

Alex, good point, and we've been there before with thumbprints, and the blood vessel scans were to overcome false negatives after a fishing or handyman weekend. Here we have 5 times the data. I should probably mention a little thing I did with thumbprint sized pieces of plasma TV screens. Small LED's might suffice. I do wish them luck.

Roberto Garavaglia

Roberto Garavaglia Independent Advisor at Innovative Payments & blockchain Strategic Advisor

Some security issues in Europe might hamper the adoption. Since the Keyo solution is based on a remote payment transaction (at the end of the day it's a digital wallet payment done in a brick&mortar location), the recently published EBA RTS on SCA & CSC provide that a two-factor authentication must be applied for such payments but the low-value ones (max 30 EUR).

Interesting to see if TRA (Transaction Risk Analysis) could consider this biometric solution appropriate for exempting the strong customer authentication.

A Finextra member 

This is more a question than a comment.  It sounds like Keyo covers both (very good) concerns brough up by @Alexander and @Dean?  It provides enough additional data that false negatives should be eliminated and it is really no different than other mobile pay solutions.  

Isn't the multi-point palm scanner very accurate?

A Finextra member 

Hi Vernon, clearly 5 datasets is exponentially better than 1, however I don't recall false positives being as much of an issue with blood vessel scanning, as opposed to (thumb)fingerprint scanning. The amount of data you compare doesn't make any difference to the outcome provided the back end is secure (except time to process/transmit/process). Of course no back-end is secure with state actors back-dooring everything the back-end relies upon, 'secure' doesn't mean what it used to be. Personally I don't favour biometrics because they are non-renewable credentials and once compromised, they are never again 'secure'. For that reason I prefer an approach where credentials are renewable and where merchants require no additional technology (or responsibility) and there is no reliance on the security of the network.

A Finextra member 

Those are excellent points.  In fact, I have never heard anyone address the non-renewable aspect of biometrics.  Having these compromised would be exponentially worse than being a victim of identity theft today.

Cheers!

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