Paying with your Face is “inFaceive”: why paying with Face or Palm concepts are set to fail.

It’s crazy to think that powerful corporations with unlimited financial resources could come up with such bad products as “pay with your face” or “pay with your palm”. It feels that someone just told the team “hey, let’s put this product on the market and see what happens” without even thinking about how invasive and uncomfortable the final customer’s experience would be. These concepts are set to fail from day one because large corporations are too far removed from their customer base.

Paying with your Face

Mastercard has introduced its new way to pay that allows customers to authorize payments by smiling for a camera or waving in front of a reader, I mean, what are they thinking? I don’t even need to mention how strange that is, thinking my face or likeness could be recognized in any store with a camera that offers “pay with face”, there’s a huge lack of privacy and consent, not to mention all of the deep fakes.

Imagine: Starting your day by grabbing a drink from the local coffee shop, focused on work and you have to stop what you’re doing and smile at a camera to pay. It’s so awkward, the experience is not seamless and people naturally don’t feel comfortable. It starts with a smile, but what else will we need to do in front of the camera to get our reward? Bounce? Dance? It’s just too much.

There’s also a technical point beyond the lack of privacy, you can only connect one payment method to your face, but what if you want to pay with another credit card at that moment? You would have to open your app and change the default payment method every time. It will make your entire experience cumbersome. At a point, it’s just easier to utilize more archaic methods like inserting a card or tapping a phone.

Security is another main issue, and I’m not talking about how companies protect our data, mostly because they all use advanced technology to secure and encrypt all personal information. I’m talking about fraudulent scams where people try to use your likeness (pictures/videos) at stores where “pay with face” is accepted. They might be able to move forward with a fraudulent transaction, and you will have to deal with that later on.

When Apple introduced a new way to unlock the iPhone, the Face ID, it was accepted by the world because it was very secure and seamless, and I believe that is what is making payment companies try “pay with face”, but the big difference is that I feel comfortable with my one and only phone having my Face ID data, it’s a device that belongs to me and I carry it all the time, and it’s the only hardware I allow to recognize my face, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing that other machines that I don’t have control over my privacy could also recognize me anywhere.

Paying with your Palm

Besides Mastercard and its “innovative” approach, there’s Amazon One with “pay with your palm”, a concept that came out in late 2021. Amazon allows you to link a payment method to your hands, and once you are at a store you would place your hand on the scanner to pay. The experience is not as bad as the Mastercard one, but many people are not comfortable with Amazon having their hands on personal data (they already have too much). According to an article posted on engadget.com, The Red Rocks Amphitheater even dropped Amazon palm scanning after a backlash from artists worried about security and hacking. The process for Amazon One is no longer seamless if you want to pay with another payment method, you would have to change your default payment method through your phone/app every time.

And finally, paying with your Fingerprints

Fingerprint technology has been in the market for almost two decades, mostly used by the government. When Apple introduced the iPhone they automatically presented a new technological way to use fingerprints to unlock devices. This innovation forced the world to feel comfortable and accept fingerprint technology. But later Apple replaced fingerprints with Face ID, and without knowing it Apple gave the idea that fingerprint technology was outdated. But the truth is, it was not executed correctly in the marketplace until now.

OVE Touch & Go is a free one-touch payment and fraud protection ecosystem that allows customers to pay with fingerprints, and businesses to accept fingerprint payments. The concept is focused on offering freedom to customers from physical cards or smartphones/watches by authorizing payments at a point-of-sale via our fingerprint technology. OVE is also a seamless and innovative experience that not only protects businesses against payment fraud but reduces liability, minimizes chargeback fees, and increases efficiency.

• Discreet experience

OVE offers the most discreet, secure, and fast experience ever created to authorize in-person payments. You don’t have to wave for a reader or smile for a camera, or any other uncomfortable situation you can imagine. You don’t need to enter a PIN or make sure no one is peeping over your shoulder at the ATM, you don’t even have to sign on a screen. With OVE one-touch is all it takes!

• Seamless approach

Once you create an OVE account everything you need to make a payment at point of sale is in your fingerprints, you won’t depend on a physical card, smartphone, or watch, it’s complete freedom. With OVE, each fingerprint can be a different payment method, which means you will have all your credit cards, bank accounts, and crypto-wallets in your fingers. For example, you can link a credit card to your right index finger, and a bank account to your left middle finger. At checkout, you just touch the finger you want to pay with.

• Security

Your fingerprints are unique, which means no one has the same, making them your most secure pins. Physical fingerprints can’t be lost, forgotten, stolen, and don’t depend on a battery. OVE chose fingerprints because they are not out there for people to use like pictures of your face online across social media platforms. OVE doesn’t collect or store the image of your fingerprints, we create personalized and encrypted digital tokens that represent your fingerprints, and they only work in our system.

Conclusion

Biometrics are here to stay and to offer the most seamless and secure products to help you to have a better experience during checkout. It’s your choice to keep up with innovation and choose what is the right fit for you, and always remember that you are the only one that should be in control of your personal information, never give that away.

The future is now, join us at OVE Touch & Go.