According to the company, paying by means once sounded like a science fiction, but the contactless palm recognition service Amazon One has already been used more than 8 million times. However, Amazon explains why it was deployed to Amazon stores in the US and over 500 Whole Foods Market Stores, but there are only 150 third-party locations.
Meanwhile, fintech startups like Latvian instruments are hoping to provide similar but independent solutions for third-party retailers for faster checkout, taking advantage of the giant’s role in widening biometric payments in the West. (China is already beginning to adopt biometric palm payments, and Tencent is working to guide Weixin Palm Pay Service to mainstream use.)
Like Apple’s Face ID, Palm Scanning uses more than a static image. It analyzes palm vein patterns and ensures that they are physically present when the user places their hands on the scanner. This method helps with secure contactless payments and also applies to a wider range of identity verification scenarios. Players like Keyo also support secure building access and other applications.
In contrast, Handwave is particularly focused on retail. I don’t own a store like Amazon so I had to find a partner who needs to have a product. Three years later, and now, with its own hardware and software, the Latvian startup is preparing to run Palm Scan devices at retail stores.
Merchants deploying startup technology will pay trading fees that are equal or less low to the standard payments for the means. According to Handwave, faster and cheaper checkouts could potentially reduce costs. But unlike some cost-saving measures, the solution aims to make things easier for customers, with a promise of no cards, apps, fingerprint scanners and facial scans, even for age verification and loyalty programs.
Co-founders of Handwave, CEOs Janis Stirna and Sandis Osmanis-Usmanis previously worked for Worldline, the world’s largest global payment provider. Despite this connection, the team aims to build a broad ecosystem. “Our plan is to work with the acquisition of financial institutions and banks,” Stirna told TechCrunch.
The startup has so far only partnered with a small number of financial institutions, but it has described it as “but it’s a very large institution, especially in Europe.” This summer, the startup signed an agreement with Visa, which can speed up the deployment of instrumental solutions in any country, according to its chief revenue officer, Oskars Laksevics.
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Handwave also looks at the US market, but Laksevics believes it would be advantageous to start in the European Union (the world’s toughest market) and demonstrate compliance there before expanding.
Being an independent European player also helps startups maintain their advantage if Amazon decides to provide a third party more aggressively from one of Amazons. Or if JP Morgan rolls out more of its own palm payment experiment.
Startups can also rely on other discussions, including pricing. After Financial Partners told Handwave that the device needs to be able to compete for price, the startup developed its own hardware and algorithms, making it cheaper than others.
Based in Riga, the means were able to operate with limited capital. The startup told TechCrunch that the R&D process was funded through bootstrap, a $780,000 Angel investment round, and $267,000 non-subsidized funds. This total came from EU-funded cybersecurity grants and support from the LIAA business incubator in Latvia and the EU-backed accelerator Ready2scale.
To prepare for the first pilot and earn regulatory accreditation, Handwave secured a $4.2 million seed funding round led by Vilnius-based VC company Practica Capital, and earned participation from the FirstPick and Outlast Fund from Lithuania. inovo.vc is a Polish VC company also operated by Baltics.
The Baltic countries have established themselves as hubs for fintech, but there are also scientific talents that are easier for startups like the means to attract than Silicon Valley, which includes AI engineers. “There are not many companies at Baltic that can get that extreme level of technical challenge to solve,” Stirna said.
Regarding Laksevics, who previously played a senior marketing role at Baltic Bank Luminor Bank, where Stirna also worked, told TechCrunch that she was drawn to the vision. “I left my job at a very paid company to join this and I really believe we are building the next big global payments platform,” he said.
Handwave seems ready to move forward the best hands, but only time will tell if the market will grab it and whether biometric palm payments will really take hold.
