China’s Palm Payment Push Is Here

In China, your hand is now your wallet, and maybe soon, your ID, and subway ticket too.

China’s Palm Payment Push is Here

Alipay, the financial arm of Alibaba, has introduced a new palm-based biometric terminal, dubbed the PL1, which enables individuals to make purchases simply by presenting their hand — no phone, card, or PIN required. Positioned as a faster, touch-free alternative for payment, this system reflects a growing industry shift toward frictionless biometric transactions.

At the core of the PL1 is a dual-mode recognition system that combines surface palm print detection with internal vein mapping. This multi-layered authentication relies on deeply unique biological signatures that are significantly harder to replicate than more common methods like fingerprints or facial scans. Alipay reports that the device maintains a false acceptance rate of less than one in a million, suggesting a substantial improvement in resisting identity spoofing.

Enrollment is designed to be quick: users hover their palm over the sensor and link their account through a QR code. Once registered, purchases are completed in around two seconds without physical interaction. During early trials in Hangzhou, this system reportedly accelerated checkout lines and contributed to more hygienic point-of-sale environments.

The PL1 arrives at a time of rapid expansion in the biometric payments sector. Forecasts estimate that more than 3 billion people will use biometrics for transactions by 2026, with total payments surpassing $5 trillion. Major players are already onboard: Amazon has integrated palm authentication across US retail and healthcare facilities, while JP Morgan is gearing up for a national deployment in the same year.

Alipay envisions the PL1’s use extending well beyond checkout counters. It is exploring applications in public transit, controlled access facilities, and healthcare check-ins, reflecting a broader trend toward embedding biometric systems in daily infrastructure. However, while domestic deployment benefits from favorable policy conditions, international expansion may be constrained by differing legal standards, particularly in jurisdictions that enforce stringent rules on biometric data usage and consent.

Despite the technological advancements and convenience the PL1 offers, privacy remains a major point of contention. Unlike passwords or cards that can be reset or replaced, biometric data is immutable. If compromised, individuals cannot simply “change” their palm patterns or vein structures. This permanence heightens the stakes of any potential data breach and raises long-term concerns about identity theft and surveillance.

Alipay’s approach, storing encrypted biometric templates locally on devices and restricting data flow within national border, does address certain regulatory demands, especially within China, but the broader implications of biometrics are likely to be a growing privacy and surveillance concerns in the coming years.


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Pay With Your Palm – AliPay Debuts Palm-Recognition Tech That Makes Secure Contactless Payments

You remember those old-time spy movies where someone fairly important would walk to a retina scanner and hunch over, while light would shine into their eye, identifying them. Most people see that technology fascinating, but impractical. The procedure seemed just a little too complicated. Turns out, AliPay (a subsidiary of Chinese giant Alibaba) has a solution – and it just involves scanning your palm.

Palm recognition has been around for a decent amount of time (we actually wrote about a smart door lock that uses the tech too), but AliPay’s PL1 gives it mass adoption. Designed to facilitate payments, the PL1 lets you hold your palm up against a sensor to approve transactions, letting you make payments without making contact with POS terminals and their potentially germ-ridden keypads.

The way it works is simple, the PL1 recognizes palm prints as well as palm vein biometrics or the shape of the network of veins underneath your skin (which are absolutely impossible to fake). The technology is implemented in a POS terminal that authenticates your approval with a palm scan rather than a fingerprint, a PIN code, or an OTP. Just hold your palm over the sensor, and the sensor does the rest in seconds.

The technology holds promise for multiple reasons. Apart from being absolutely infallible and impossible to trick (it's hard to counterfeit a palm with vein structures) it’s also fast, and contact-free, making it perfect for most societies, except for probably places where you’re wearing gloves, whether because of the cold or because of safety.

The PL1’s application isn’t limited to payments either, AliPay says it can be used for authentication, access, and even be deployed in large numbers at terminals in public transport like subways or buses, enabling contact-free and secure modes of access and payment in a society largely relying on fingerprints that are easy to fake, and facial recognition that has a pretty large error rate.