Pay With Your Palm: New Technology In China Grabs Harsh Goenka's Attention

Harsh Goenka, the chairman of RPG Group, often shares the inspiring tech innovations happening around the world with his 1.8 million X followers. On Tuesday, he shared a clip on X that demonstrated China’s new ‘palm payment’ method developed by tech company Tencent. While sharing this clip, Goenka wrote, “Technology continues to simplify our lives….” In the video, the woman shows how she first links her palm print to her payment accounts, and later just swipes her palm over a turnstile and gets entry into the Daxing Airport Express Line subway. Her mere palm swiping deducts the appropriate amount from her WeChat wallet.

The woman says, “The whole palm payment experience was smooth. Even though palm payment is mostly limited for transportation for the time being, in future it could be adopted by stores, restaurants and many other venues.” Tencent launched this palm scanning technology, called Weixin Palm Payment, in Beijing in June 2023.

Commenting on Goenka’s post, an X user wrote about how palm scanning tech may face challenges like anti-social elements scratching the scanning devices which makes scanning hard. He wrote, “Privacy in 21st century, what privacy?! This biometric tech will be norm soon, it’s there in rural version of Adhaar in Bharat with fingerprints transactions. However, my own current experience- Scan readers at public places (talking about Europe where force like CRPF is not manning stations) often end up scratched, you know naughty kids/ or anti social elements, phone app QR code’s scanning itself becomes a hassle. Thus, I continue with a card with magnetic reader, this shall die-out ofcourse.”

Another person wrote, “I thought about this before, to use palm & face recognition plus a PIN that we can remember to draw cash in ATMs also at PoS to make direct payment. No need to carry cards or wallet.”

An X user posed a rather peculiar question, “Where do we hide palms where we are sleeping? Can someone bring in a mobile reader and happily swipe all the palms possible?”

Palm vein scanning technology works by scanning the image of the veins inside a person’s hand. Palm scanning is believed to be a more reliable biometric data system than collecting fingerprints. The fingerprints can change by external factors, like ageing, skin disease or the state of the skin on the fingers, whereas the palm vein patterns remain the same throughout a person’s life.