Veins are the rising star of biometric payments. You hover your palm in front of an infrared light scanner and the system recognizes the unique pattern of your veins to identify you.

It’s the same concept of other biometric authentication options like the fingerprint scan, iris scan, or facial recognition tech, but veins are like the Goldilocks of biomarkers.

Every person’s vein pattern is totally unique, even in identical twins; the pattern doesn’t change as the body ages; and you can’t actually see most people’s veins so they’re extremely hard to counterfeit.

Fingerprints have problems as a biometric security; it’s actually pretty trivial to take a smudge and something to cast it on, and you’re in business.

And retinal scans? Oh yeah, we all saw the movie with the eyeball on a pencil…forget about that.

DNA? Twins. Also, clones.

Via Motherboard.