No cash, no card, no problem. With PulseWallet, all you need to pay is the palm of your hand. Introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show last week and slated to roll out in February, PulseWallet is a new spin on biometrics and payments. Using the apparently extremely complex pattern of veins in the palm of one’s hand to create a unique identifier, PulseWallet links a payment card to a hand print, in a way making the customer’s body his wallet. Technology known as PalmSecure creates the unique signature based on the vein pattern. PalmSecure is widely used internationally at ATMs, according to The Verge. After the image is taken, a process which is said to take just one second or less, the user can perform cardless transactions at venues that accept PulseWallet. A small wrinkle to this is that there aren’t any such venues yet, and there seems to be little incentive for merchants to invest in one of these devices, the price of which is still undisclosed. The device, it should be noted, is designed to connect to existing point-of-sale devices, rather than replacing them, which may ease adoption pains somewhat, but it is still a new system and software [...]
↧