You can now pay for things in China using the palm of your hand

Chinese tech giant Tencent has developed a new payment method dubbed ‘Palm Payment’.

Palm, as in palm of your hand, because this sci-fi payment method allows you pay for stuff by simply hovering your hand above a palm reader.

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Some would call it ‘innovative’ while others would no doubt call it ‘dystopian’, but we should point out that this payment method does not involve implanting chips into your body.

Tencent teamed up with WeChat to implement this type of tech, and it is designed to work in the same way that Apple Face ID does.

The technology uses unique biometric data to trigger payments.

The scanner recognizes your vein pattern and your palm prints, along with any distinguishing marks – scars and tattoos, for example.

As you can imagine, people are a bit spooked by this.

“Just another way for the government to monitor people,” one user said.

“Just when you thought lazy couldn’t get lazier, now it’s apparently a big task to just take a credit card out of your wallet,” another wrote, making a fairly good point.

Mind you, other commenters had different opinions, and don’t seem to think this is a big deal after all.

For example, two people pointed out that this is basically the same thing as unlocking your phone using your face, which is something that many of us do on a daily basis.

And then, of course, there’s always room for sarcasm.

“People will steal hands instead of wallets now,” one user said, adding a laughing emoji.

“Sorry sir, your hand was declined,” another wrote.