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Talk to the hand. Quixter’s palm reader device.

Just as consumer electronic giants like Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Apple Inc. make fingerprint scanning the norm for mobile identification and payments; enter palm scanning.

Unlike fingerprints, which can be stolen from your coffee mug, elevator buttons or wherever you place your fingers, a scan of the vein structure in your hand is equally unique, but harder to steal. At least, that’s what a group of dorm-room entrepreneurs at Lund University in southern Sweden think.

Quixter, a small company founded by Fredrik Leifland, an engineering student in Lund, has built a reader that analyses the structure of the blood veins inside the palm, and has linked it to a payments system. Like many biometric sensors, it emits infrared light, which is absorbed by the veins in the palm. The vein pattern is subsequently analyzed by the terminal to establish the user’s identity, and process a payment.

Just like fingerprints and eyes, blood veins make up a complex random pattern that is unique to each person. Veins grow in a chaotic manner before birth, but undergo only marginal change during a person’s lifetime, which means users of the Quixter will only have to register their hands’ vein structure once.

One of the technology’s main benefits is security, Mr. Leifland said. “With our terminal, you place your hand a few inches above the sensor, leaving no traces behind,” he said.

Mr. Leifland said Quixter’s palm reader takes only five seconds on average to process a payment.

Quixter, a self-funded company, is in its early stages, having sold its first palm scanner terminal a year ago.

To date, it has rolled out a network of 15 palm scanning terminals at the Lund University campus, with 1,600 users in total.



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