Amazon is developing technology with the potential to disrupt yet another industry, exploring a new way for customers to charge purchases without the use of plastic. A simple wave will do.
Applying imaging recognition software with 3-D geometry, “Orville” will scan a human hand in 300-miliseconds with a one ten-thousandth of 1% accuracy and charge a purchase to the consumers account. Amazon’s goal is to bring the technology to a few of their recently acquired Whole Foods locations by the start of the new year and grow it from there.
If this works, and what has Amazon done so far that hasn’t worked, they could expand the capability beyond grocery shopping. “I would certainly not be surprised to have them look at entertainment, sports, and ticketing. They have such a powerful and trusted brand,” says Jeff Fromm, an international branding expert with Barkley, Inc and author of The Purpose Advantage: How to Unlock New Ways of Doing Business. He says Amazon has mastered the art of hyper-convenience. “Not convenient, but hyper-convenient, and so the definition of convenience is constantly changing.”
And here we go again, another Amazon disruption on the way to alter how we’ve always done things. This one we can wave at.