Amazon One lets you pay at stores with the palm of your hand

The palm is the new fingerprint.

Amazon One, a new service from Amazon, is a novel way of contactless payment that scans your palm for authentication.

Besides payments, it could be used for anything that requires authentication, like entering a stadium or presenting a loyalty card. For starters, though, Amazon will introduce it in select Amazon Go stores, adding Amazon One to the stores' entry gates.

To start using Amazon One, you'll have to go through an onboarding process which consists of inserting your credit card into the Amazon One device, then hovering your palm above it, and following the instructions as the device builds your unique palm signature. Once you've signed up, you'll be able to enter Amazon Go stores just by holding your palm over the device "for a second or so," Amazon says.

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Images of your palm aren't stored on the Amazon One device itself. Credit: Amazon

The device works by evaluating "multiple aspects of your palm." No two palms are alike, Amazon says, so this should be highly secure. The company also says it's taken great care to make sure your biometric data is safe, including protecting the Amazon One device with multiple security controls. The imagery of your palm isn't stored on the device itself — it's encrypted and sent to a secure area in Amazon's cloud, where your palm signature is created. Customers will be able to delete data if they want to.

Amazon says it chose palm recognition as it's more private than other solutions; for example, you can't determine a person's identity by looking at an image of the palm (as you can with an image of a face), and it requires an intentional gesture of holding your palm over a scanner (again, as opposed to face recognition).

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Notably, you don't need an Amazon account to sign up; your credit card and a mobile phone number will do. However, customers who do use an Amazon account with Amazon One will be able to log into Amazon's website and manage their information, as well as see their usage history.

We've first heard about Amazon's plan to use palm biometric data in September last year, and then again in January. Now, after the initial launch, Amazon says it will add Amazon One as an option in additional Amazon stores "in the coming months." The company hopes that third parties such as other retailers, stadiums, and office buildings, will start using the system in the future, too.