• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, March 2, 2016

The West Coast gets all the cool pilot programs from tech companies.

Google announced the launch of its Hands Free pilot program today, but it is currently only working with select stores in South Bay, including McDonald's, Papa John's and local businesses. The payment program was announced last year at the I/O conference.

Using Bluetooth, WiFi and other sensors in your phone, the app can determine whether you’re in a store. When users are ready, they can tell the cashier they would “like to pay with Google,” and the cashier can verify their initials and the picture they have added to their Hands Free profile.

Some stores are also running a visual identification pilot that can use in store cameras to automatically verify your identity. All images taken will be deleted immediately, the company says.

Google has not announced any plans to expand beyond the small testing pool they have going right now, but with Android pay bringing in 1.5 million new registrations a month since its launch, the company’s blog says they want to explore the future of mobile payments.

Google has been walking a fine line with regard to privacy lately. The company was recently hit with a potential class action lawsuit in Illinois for building geometric “faceprints” of people whose photos were uploaded to the Google Photos cloud without consent.

Many of these people did not even have Google accounts, and someone else took the pictures.

Hands Free is a separate app from Android Pay, available on iOS and Android phones.