Amazon is adding age verification to its palm-based Amazon One identity offering.
The company announced Monday that the age-verification feature is rolling out at Coors Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies.
At Ballakayan, customers 21 and older can purchase alcoholic beverages by simply hovering their palm over an Amazon One device, as long as they’ve previously enrolled in the Amazon One program.
Consumers already enrolled in the program can add age verification to their account by visiting one.amazon.com, uploading a front and back photo of a government-issued ID, such as a driver’s license, and a selfie;
Registration can also be done online and at kiosks where Amazon One is available, including in the ballroom.
After signing up, a consumer can simply hover over their palm on an Amazon One device, where the server can see the 21+ message and the consumer’s selfie for verification. The purchase can be paid for with another bank transfer and linked credit card account.
A contactless experience
Verifying a customer’s age for every alcohol purchase is a popular touchpoint for retailers, bars and brewers, Dilip Kumar, vice president of AWS Applications, explained on Amazon’s news site.
That leads to longer transaction times and puts pressure on worker productivity, he continued. Amazon One’s age verification feature addresses these challenges and alleviates the burden and time of manual identity verification.
“At Coors Field, we’ve always prided ourselves on putting the customer experience first,” Rockies senior director of food service operations and development John McKay said in a statement.
“As the first sports stadium to allow modern palm-recognition technology like Amazon One for age verification,” he added, “we’re enabling a contactless experience for Colorado Rockies fans so they can grab a drink and get back to the game.” : faster”.
Amazon One’s introduction of biometric age verification marks a big step toward a single digital identity future, argues Eduardo Azanza, CEO of Veridas, a global provider of biometric identification and authentication solutions.
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“With a highly accurate and reliable method of age verification, businesses can stay compliant with age laws and reduce the risk of unauthorized access, all while offering customers a more pleasant experience with reduced lines and faster service,” he told the E-Commerce Times.
“Coors Field is the first of many venues and organizations to implement this type of biometric system,” he continued. “Convenience is key to a good user experience, and businesses are always looking for the most efficient and streamlined approach.”
“This development is likely to shape verification practices across industries, promoting the adoption of biometric technologies while highlighting the need for strong data privacy and security standards,” he added. “Simple and convenient is the future, and to stay competitive, businesses must act.”
Adjustment channel in the sleeves
While age verification is useful in physical locations that sell alcohol, its use outside of that can be limited. “Biometrics is not widely adopted yet, so the use cases will be limited,” Sucharita Kodali, an analyst at Forrester Research, told the E-Commerce Times.
“While this technology is exciting in the physical world, what we’re seeing more and more is the need for this type of technology for online verification,” Azanza noted.
“The online industry needs this type of system to make age verification seamless and secure,” he added.
This will be especially true as age enforcement requirements for online sites become more stringent.
Under Bloomberg’s law, dozens of proposals are pending in states across the country that seek to regulate a child’s online experience. Many will rely on companies like Meta, Alphabet and TikTok to find out the age of their online users.
Online services that do not comply with the requirements of the new laws may face fines ranging from 2,500 to 250,000 USD.
Often, activities that require proof of age in a valid form of identification in the physical world may require a simple click in an online box. “There’s a big gap between digital and physical requirements,” Azanza said.
Privacy Challenges
The problem with tightening the age determination policies of online services is that collecting more accurate information can also lead to the collection of more sensitive data about a person’s identity.
“Do you really want a commercial organization like Amazon to scan your driver’s license, especially one that can go to the city, combining that information with their amazing database on each of us?” asked Micah Solomon, a customer experience and service consultant based in Seattle.
Amazon claims it won’t store photos of government IDs uploaded by consumers to Amazon One after they’ve been verified by an ISO 27001-certified identity verification provider.
“Customers’ comfort should depend on how much they do or don’t trust Amazon’s claims that they don’t store these IDs,” Solomon told the E-Commerce Times. “However,” he added, “customers seem surprisingly okay with allowing their IDs to be copied in apparently insecure environments like the front desk of their local doctor’s office, so maybe I’m part of a small minority.” that even thinks about such things.”
Craving for a warm experience
Solomon noted that Amazon One could be the ultimate friction reducer in the physical environment, although reducing friction is only part of the picture.
“I strongly recommend consulting clients with my customer experience that friction reduction is not the end game here. Great customer experience,” he said.
“In a context where customers want to get the provider out of the way, which is certainly the case when it comes to age verification, reducing friction is a great thing to focus on,” he explained. :
“But in other contexts where you want a warmer experience — the front lobby of a great, or even decent hotel, or ideally a car dealership — that’s never going to be the full experience that customers want,” he added.
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If a business reduces friction at the point of changing money in a commercial transaction, he continued, a forward-thinking business can represent the warmth that customers seek in other areas.
“If you go to any Amazon Fresh store, you’ll definitely see that’s not happening,” he said. “The only employees even remotely trained to be able to interact warmly with customers and not nearly run them over with their carts of refills are the fabulous people at the cash registers.”
“Because the cash registers are rarely used with Amazon One technology, a lot of heat is absorbed from the experience,” he stated.
Amazon One is available at more than 100 Whole Foods Market stores, select Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores, and many third-party locations, including Panera Bread restaurants, sports stadiums, entertainment venues, convenience stores and travel retailers at several U.S. airports :
Amazon said the age-verification feature at Coors Field will be rolled out at additional facilities in the coming months.