Near field communication (NFC) has allowed users in Asia and especially Japan to replace credit cards with phones — yet the technology has languished in the U.S., in spite of Google’s best efforts to provide a “digital wallet” that allows users to pay for things simply by touching their phone to a pad.

PalmSecure, a superior competing technology from Fujitsu has now emerged. It’s a contactless biometric system that does not require the user to have their own hardware. Near-infrared light shines up from a detector, allowing it to image the unique pattern of veins in a person’s hand. This pattern is stored as a unique identifier, not an image.