Retail giant Carrefour is set to launch a trial project allowing shoppers to pay with the palm of their hand, French media reported.
Pretty soon you won’t need to pull out your bank card to pay for your purchases. From July 29, the Carrefour Market Paris Seine shop in the 6th arrondissement of Paris will test a technology developed by Ingenico.
It involves using palm prints to pay for purchases. In practice, shoppers will record the vein pattern of their hands through a special terminal and then link it to their bank card. They then simply swipe their hand over the payment terminal to confirm their purchases.
Checkout process in Carrefour
According to the group, led by Alexander Bompar, the goal is to “simplify the checkout process and improve the customer experience.” The press release emphasises the “very high level of security” associated with personal and banking data, and to test this functionality the company wants to take advantage of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, of which Carrefour is a major partner.
Ingenico is a company with a global presence that provides payment solutions, particularly bank card payment terminals. It has been offering biometric transactions for several years and in 2016 it created Ingenico Labs, a team entirely dedicated to innovation.
For its palm print payment solution, Ingenico has partnered with Fujitsu in 2023. It assured in January 2023:
“Every person has a unique vein pattern on their palm, palm vein identification is one of the most accurate and secure biometric technologies in the world. It is less intrusive and more secure than other alternatives such as fingerprints and facial recognition.”
Ingenico Amazon has also launched the service in more than 200 Whole Foods shops in the US from summer 2023.
However, not everyone has welcomed the innovation. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, leader of the right-wing Debout la France (France Arise), took a negative view of the new payment method:
“Digital dictatorship on the march … Carrefour is testing palm payment in one of its shops! Under the pretext of modernity, mass surveillance and attacks on freedoms are becoming more and more frequent. We must react quickly and decisively. Boycott Carrefour and they will quickly give up!”
