Keyo Lets Shoppers Pay With Their Palms

Keyo knows that consumers can forget a wallet, or they can forget a phone — but they can’t forget their own hands.

And so the Chicago-based biometrics firm thinks that consumers should be able to leverage the fact that the blood vessels in their hands actually create a unique biometric identifier to pay for things.

“We really see a future without keys, cards, wallets, IDs and tickets,” said Keyo cofounder and CEO Jaxon Klein.

Founded by a husband, wife and their college friend — and in partnership with Japanese tech company Fujitsu — Keyo’s countertop payment terminal proprietary software makes it possible for users to hover their palms over the PoS and pay.

Other than the neat biometric angle, much of Keyo should be familiar to any mobile wallet user — an account is created with credit card information. Users get a registration code sent to their phone.

Then things get a bit different.

Users have to go to a store that uses Keyo, punch in the code they got on their phone into the Keyo device, and place their right hand over the attached payment terminal so the system can take two infrared scans. The scans build a pattern to be read for future transactions, its image is encrypted and can only be retrieved to match with during a transaction.

From there it is all tap, scan and go.

Kevo says its service is better than most of what is in the biometric market — largely because what it tracks is unique and hard to copy.