Palm-based biometric payments, once promoted as a frictionless alternative to cards and mobile wallets, are likely to face legal challenges in the European Union, even as their rollout in the United States has shown mixed results.
Systems such as Amazon One allow users to link a payment method to a scan of their palm, enabling checkout without a phone or card. The technology was deployed across more than 500 stores in the United States, including locations of Whole Foods Market, and processed millions of transactions.
However, adoption remained limited. Amazon began scaling back the use of the system in retail environments in 2026, citing low usage relative to expectations. The move followed several years of expansion into physical stores, stadiums, and other venues.
Palm Payment Projects Launch With Mixed Success
Other companies have also tested palm-based payments, with varying degrees of progress. Mastercard piloted a palm biometric payment system in Uruguay, while Tencent has rolled out palm recognition for payments and transport use cases in China and partnered with Visa and Treeal to expand internationally. In Europe, Latvia-based Handwave is preparing retail pilots and has integrated Visa’s tokenization infrastructure to enable palm-linked card payments.
Despite growing experimentation, most of these initiatives remain in pilot stages or limited deployments rather than large-scale commercial adoption. The muted uptake highlights a broader challenge for biometric payments: consumer willingness to trade sensitive personal data for incremental convenience.
Regulators Scrutinise Biometric Payments
Unlike passwords or cards, biometric identifiers such as palm vein patterns cannot be changed if compromised. This permanence has placed them under heightened scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates, particularly in jurisdictions with strict data protection rules.
In the European Union, such systems would fall under the scope of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which classifies biometric data used for identification as a “special category” requiring explicit consent and additional safeguards.
Legal experts say this creates a higher bar for deployment compared with the United States, where privacy rules are fragmented and largely determined at the state level.
Under EU law, companies must demonstrate that the use of biometric data is necessary and proportionate. For payment services, regulators may question whether collecting palm data is justified when alternatives such as contactless cards or mobile wallets are widely available.
Consent requirements could also prove a hurdle. Users would need to provide clear, informed, and freely given consent for the collection and processing of their biometric data. Pre-ticked boxes or bundled consent tied to broader service agreements may not meet regulatory standards.
In addition, companies would need to address how biometric data is stored, secured, and potentially shared across systems. Even when converted into encrypted templates, such data remains sensitive because it is uniquely linked to an individual and cannot be reissued if exposed.
EU Privacy Laws Are Even Stricter Than Those in U.S.
The risk of litigation is another factor. The GDPR allows regulators to impose fines of up to 4% of global annual revenue for serious violations, while also enabling individuals and groups to bring claims for damages. In the United States, biometric data collection has already led to lawsuits under state-level privacy laws.
Industry participants say these factors could slow the adoption of palm-based payments in Europe, where regulators have taken a more cautious approach to emerging technologies involving personal data.
At the same time, the limited traction of such systems in the United States suggests that regulatory barriers may not be the only obstacle. Consumer behavior remains a critical variable, with many users opting for established payment methods that do not require sharing biometric identifiers.
While biometric authentication continues to expand in areas such as smartphone access and identity verification, its role in everyday payments remains uncertain. For palm-based payment systems in particular, the combination of legal constraints and user hesitancy may limit their path to broader adoption, especially in markets with stricter privacy regimes.
