When people first hear about palm payment, the same concerns come up. Here's the myth on one side, and how PalmPay actually handles it on the other — side by side, so you can judge for yourself.
01
"Anyone can put a scanner on someone's hand and payment will just go through."
The scanner only completes a transaction for a palm that has been enrolled by that same person, with consent, against a verified KYC identity. An un-enrolled palm returns "not recognised" — no transaction is even initiated, let alone approved. The hand of a stranger is, to the system, just an anonymous shape.
02
"If I'm asleep or unconscious, someone can grab my hand and pay."
The system performs a liveness check before accepting any scan — it reads the flow of blood through the veins, not just the pattern. An unconscious hand, a dead hand, or a hand forced into position under abnormal circulation conditions does not pass. The scanner needs a living, normally circulating palm to even consider a match.
03
"Someone can take a photo of my palm and use it later."
Palm veins are inside your body, not on the surface. Cameras and phone lenses see your skin, not the vascular structure underneath it. A photograph, scan, or video of your hand contains zero information the scanner can use. This is the entire reason we chose palm veins over fingerprints or face — there is nothing visible to capture.
04
"What about a silicone mould or a 3D-printed fake hand?"
A mould has no blood, no temperature, and no real vascular geometry. The infrared scanner doesn't look at the outside of your hand — it looks under the skin, at how blood absorbs the infrared light as it moves through your veins. A fake hand returns no readable pattern at all. Spoofs fail the liveness check instantly.
05
"If your database is hacked, my palm is gone forever — I can't change it."
We do not store palm images. We store an encrypted mathematical template derived from your vein pattern — and the maths runs only one way. The template cannot be reversed into a palm. Even if a database were breached, attackers would find unusable encrypted code, not your biometric identity. The raw scan is discarded the moment the template is created.
06
"My twin or family member could use my account."
Palm vein patterns are unique to each individual — even identical twins have completely different vein structures. Veins form by the dynamics of blood flow in the womb, not by DNA alone, so twins, siblings, and parents all have distinct vascular maps. No two palms in the world produce the same template.
07
"What if the scanner fails or there's no internet at the counter?"
The biometric verification runs locally on the device — your palm is matched without contacting a cloud service. The payment itself still routes through licensed payment rails when connectivity returns, but the security layer doesn't depend on the cloud. The scanner cannot become a fraud vector simply because a network drops.
