NFC for mobile payments has struggled with adoption. Not least because the user needs to have an NFC-enabled phone in order to be able to make these contactless payments –in addition to the retailer itself being set up to accept NFC payments.

Now there is an alternative payment technology that strips away one layer of complexity at least to help lower the barrier to entry —by using a biometric identifier to power payments: specifically, the user’s palm.

More specifically still, the pattern of veins inside their palm. Swedish startup Quixter demos its pay by palm technology in their marketing video.

The idea is the brainchild of Fredrik Leifland, an engineering student at Lund University, who wanted to come up with a quicker system for making card payments that did away with the related challenge of fishing cards out of wallets.

The Quixter system uses vein-scanning technology to identify the individual –based on the unique vein-pattern in an individual’s palm— deducting payment from their previously linked bank account.

Vein-scanning technology is not new in itself. It’s been incorporated into ATMs by banks in Japan (and elsewhere) for several years, as a way to provide another layer of security for large transactions. However Quixter’s Leifland claims no one else has launched a payments system leveraging the palm – ergo, he says his startup is first to market with a tech system.

“There are other companies looking at similar solutions but they’re not on the market yet,” he notes in the video.

Generally speaking, Quixter?s palm-scanning system has the advantage of enabling a payment to be made without the person needing to have any physical money or payment cards on their person. Or, indeed, an NFC-phone. […]