Say Goodbye to Cards: Dubai’s Astra Tech Introduces Contactless Payments
Dubai may be transitioning into a Star Trek-esque world as soon enough you won’t need to swipe your phone or bank card at checkout counters. Instead, with the power of your hand, by simply motioning it across a sensor, you’ll have paid for your purchase.
Meet Palm Pay, the contactless palm recognition service that enables users to pay using their palm through biometric authentication methods. What happens is that the payment machine reads the customer’s palm prints to authenticate any purchase.
Who Is Behind This New Tech?
Brought to life by Astra Tech’s fintech subsidiary, PayBy, the creative payment solution was revealed at the Dubai Fintech Summit. Astra Tech is known as the homegrown UAE company and investment group that raises funds to propel the UAE’s digital ecosystem.
How Customers Can Sign Up?
The technology is going to be free for users. According to Abdallah Abu Sheikh, the founder of Astra Tech:
“In the first phase, users will be able to register through the device itself at the point of sale. In the future, the palm authentication process will be integrated into apps (like PayBy and Botim) to allow customers to easily update their accounts with their palm prints through an authentication feature on their phone, just like the facial recognition authentication process works today.”
When Is The Expected Rollout?
Sheikh also gave a glimpse into the product’s timeline, “the rollout of the Palm Pay technology is planned to happen gradually throughout 2024.” So far, a certain number of machines are being used for testing purposes so that the company can supply over 50,000 PayBy merchants with the new tech.
Seeing how this tech will involve contactless payment, it means customers won’t have to worry about losing their card or any inconveniences that come with payments using credit or debit cards.
