UAE: No more card payments? Soon, just wave your palm for purchases

UAE: No more card payments? Soon, just wave your palm for purchases

Published: Tue 7 May 2024, 6:00 AM

You could soon just hover your palm in front of machines to pay for your purchases at stores across the UAE. That means no more swiping your bank cards or phones at cash counters after shopping.

“The roll-out of the Palm Pay technology is planned to happen gradually throughout 2024,” Abdallah Abu Sheikh, founder of technology development group Astra Tech, told Khaleej Times.

The company launched the payment solution through its fintech subsidiary PayBy at the Dubai Fintech Summit.

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Palm Pay is a contactless palm recognition service that enables payments using biometric authentication methods. Payment machines will read customers’ palm prints to authenticate transactions.

“We currently have a certain number of machines which will be used for testing purposes within the local market infrastructure. (This will) ensure complete readiness for scaling to over 50,000 PayBy merchants throughout the year,” Sheikh said. “We’re currently ironing out final details to ensure that Palm Pay rolls out seamlessly this year.”

The company is exploring integrating the technology with banks “in the future”, enabling users to directly link their accounts with it.

How customers can sign up

The technology will be free