亚马逊将推出"徒手"支付

Forget the titanium Apple Card — Amazon's latest payment method uses flesh and blood.

苹果公司的Apple Card钛金卡可以收起来了，亚马逊的最新支付方式只要用户伸手就可以。

The e-tailing giant's engineers are quietly testing scanners that can identify an individual human hand as a way to ring up a store purchase, with the goal of rolling them out at its Whole Foods supermarket chain in the coming months, The Post has learned.

据《纽约邮报》报道，这家电商巨头的工程师正在默默测试可以辨识手部的扫描仪用来结账，打算几个月后在旗下的全食连锁超市推出。

Employees at Amazon's New York offices are serving as guinea pigs for the biometric technology, using it at a handful of vending machines to buy such items as sodas, chips, granola bars and phone chargers, according to sources briefed on the plans.

据消息人士透露，亚马逊纽约办公室的员工正在试用这种生物识别技术，在少数几台自动售货机上使用该技术购买汽水、薯条、格兰诺拉燕麦棒和手机充电器等商品。

The high-tech sensors are different from fingerprint scanners found on devices like the iPhone and don't require users to physically touch their hands to the scanning surface.

这种高科技传感器不同于iPhone手机等装置上的指纹扫描仪，不需要使用者将手碰触到扫描仪表面。

Instead, they use computer vision and depth geometry to process and identify the shape and size of each hand they scan before charging a credit card on file.

扫描仪使用计算机视觉和深度几何学技术，处理和辨识扫描到的每双手的形状和大小，而后进行信用卡付款。

The system, code-named "Orville," will allow customers with Amazon Prime accounts to scan their hands at the store and link them to their credit or debit card.

这套系统代号为“奥维尔”，亚马逊Prime会员顾客可以在门店通过该系统扫描自己的手，并将信息与信用卡或借记卡绑定。

It's accurate to within one ten-thousandth of 1%, but Amazon engineers are scrambling to improve it to a millionth of 1% ahead of its launch, the source said.

据消息人士透露，这一系统已精准到出错率不到百万分之一，但亚马逊的工程师们正努力在正式推出之前，将出错率降至亿分之一。

Amazon hopes to introduce the tech to a handful of its Whole Foods stores by the beginning of next year and to eventually expand the super-fast checkout tech to all US locations. The pace of the rollout will depend on how quickly Whole Foods is able to install it and train employees on how to use it, sources said.

消息人士还透露说，亚马逊希望在明年初之前能在一些全食超市引进这项技术，并希望最终将这一快速结账技术推广到所有美国门店。技术推开的进度将取决于全食超市安装系统的速度，以及培训员工使用系统的时间。

"We don't comment on rumors or speculation," an Amazon spokesperson said.

亚马逊一位发言人表示：“我们不对谣言或猜测发表评论。”

While a regular card transaction typically takes between three and four seconds, Amazon's new technology can process the charge in less than 300 milliseconds, a person familiar with the project said.

一位知情人士表示，普通的银行卡交易通常需要3至4秒的时间，而亚马逊的新技术可以在不到300毫秒的时间内处理完交易。

"Retailers have always been interested in faster checkout," Majd Maksad, founder and CEO of Status Money, a personal finance site, told The Post. "You only have to walk into Whole Foods to see the massive lines of people waiting to check out. It's a massive friction point."

个人理财网站“金钱地位”的创始人兼首席执行官马吉德·马卡萨德在接受《纽约邮报》采访时说：“零售商一直对加快结账速度很感兴趣。你只要走进全食超市，就会看到人们排着长队等着结账，很容易发生摩擦。”

If successful, the technology also could help encourage consumers to spend more when they visit Whole Foods, he said.

他说，如果能成功的话，这项技术还可以鼓励消费者在全食超市购物时多花点钱。

"People tend to spend more when they don't have the experience of touching something tangible like money," Maksad said. "The utility of money becomes more ephemeral."

马卡萨德说：“当人们没有实实在在地花出纸币时，他们往往会花更多的钱。金钱的效用变得更加短暂。”

At Amazon's budding chain of "Go" convenience stores that launched last year, customers use a phone app to check in at a turnstile. They can then fill their bags and carry them out without ever passing a register thanks to computer vision and an array of sensors all over the store.

在亚马逊去年推出的新兴Go连锁便利店中，顾客进入门店时使用一款手机应用程序在闸门处刷一下，买完东西以后不用到收银台结账，打包就可以走 了。因为店里安装了计算机视觉设备以及无处不在的传感器。

With the new, hand-based tech, shoppers won't even have to bring their phones. Nevertheless, experts say it's unclear whether customers will be enthusiastic about scanning their hands at Whole Foods.

有了这种扫描手部的新技术，顾客甚至不用带手机。不过专家表示，目前还不清楚消费者是否会对全食超市的手部扫描感兴趣。