Not very long ago Google announced about “Digital Wallet” leveraging on Near Filed Communication. Some retail store are also figuring out how you can use Augmented Reality and Face Recognition technology to auto-debit money from the customer’s account to enhance shopping experience.
However these technologies are still pretty unstable when you combine it with m-Commerce or e-Commerce. But one thing that’s unique about an user would be his thumb impression or palm impression. So bringing it into mobile applications would not only solve the issue of payment in retail but checkin to airports (which already some airports have tried).
Fujitsu has manufactured a system called PalmSecure that requires no hardware on the user side. The technology work just by waving your hand in front of the detector. It identifies the users and make payment on their behalf. Very useful for priority customers or gold customers in retail. Same thing can be applied to business class passenger in airlines enriching their boarding experience.
PalmSecure is a identification / security scheme that falls under the umbrella of biometrics. Examples of other biometric identifiers are fingerprint, voice, SIRI, face recognition etc. PalmSecure is uniquely unobtrusive as it requires the same gesture required to use an NFC phone wallet or to swipe a credit card, only you don’t have to have anything on your person to make it work.
Few organizations have adopted it already as a trial to replace Single Sign On to access to their enterprise systems. I am thinking of ordering some of these devices and try to see if you can connect it to an iPad which then can control anything starting from opening the door of a car to give me my medical history for last 6 months.
Reference: http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/biometrics/palm-vein/palmsecure/index.html
