Wonder what stunted adoption of this? High costs, users not liking it b/c privacy, credit cards/tap to pay being a good enough experience already? The handful of times I used this, it was nice.
I just signed up and used it at Whole Foods. For me, and for that use case only it removes a step of loading the Whole Foods app to scan a QR code for my account.
But have no idea why anyone else would adopt this.
I'm completely unfamiliar with these, but it seems like you need to press your palm against the device, no? The doctor's office is the last place I'd want to do that.
You don't need to press your palm, you just hover it over the plate for a moment. I think the hardware is just an IR illuminator+camera.
It does seem like a technology that should have a useful niche. Unlike fingerprints you don't leave partial copies of your vein pattern on everything you touch; unlike face recognition it's an explicit act you take so it can be used for attestation-type actions (like paying). It still has all the usual disadvantages and advantages of any other biometric. Perhaps the unique niche isn't big enough to fit a new product into though.
If you trust Amazon, they were never storing images of your actual palm but instead creating and storing unique hashes from that data. Again, if you trust them, they did it in just about the most privacy protecting way possible.