Jumio Provides Biometric Onboarding Tech for American Green Vending Machines

Jumio will be supplying American Green with facial recognition technology to help verify the ages and identities of those purchasing age-restricted goods at vending machines. American Green is best known for its AGM Age Verifying Vending Machine, which uses biometrics to enable the self-service distribution of cannabis, alcohol, and other restricted products.

Prior versions of the AGM have identified customers with finger vein authentication. The partnership with Jumio will allow American Green to supplement that with facial recognition to deliver a more convenient and secure onboarding process. To register with an AGM, users will first need to use their phone to scan their driver’s license, and present that image to the AGM. Jumio will confirm the authenticity of the document, and the AGM camera will compare the user’s face to the document to make sure the two are a match. The AGM camera will also complete a liveness check to ensure that the customer is standing at the vending machine, using Jumio technology installed directly on the AGM itself.

Once that process is complete, users will be able to use the AGM’s finger vein reader to link their vein biometrics to their account. Facial recognition will only be used during onboarding, since a vein scan will be enough to authenticate the user for subsequent purchases. The Jumio-powered onboarding system is expected to debut by November 1.

“We wanted a software solution with excellent performance, reliability, and adaptability to power the AGM’s biometric customer onboarding process,” said American Green Automated Development head Lindel Creed. “The software also had to be compatible with the software that is currently running our machine. Jumio provided everything we need and more.”

Emerald Organic Products disclosed similar plans to use facial recognition to sell CBD in vending machines after acquiring a controlling stake in Bezalel Jewelry back in 2019. PanPacific, meanwhile, has used finger vein technology in machines that sell beer.

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July 1, 2021 – by Eric Weiss