Amazon One is expanding to the largest area to date: the company is now testing its palm-scanning payment technology at Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Seattle, Amazon.
The company has used Amazon One payment technology in its Seattle-branded Amazon stores (including Amazon Go and Amazon Books), but the launch of Whole Foods will make the most substantial expansion of the technology to date. The company says thousands of customers have already signed up for Amazon One.
According to a frequently asked question from Amazon, palm scan technology analyzes “the tiny features of your palm – both surface details such as lines and ridges, and subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” to identify a client, allowing them to biometric scanning as an alternative (and, theoretically, faster) method of check-out than walking around with a credit card or cash.
Customers will be able to register their palms at kiosks in accepted Whole Foods stores, allowing them to associate a physical credit card with a palm scan. (Amazon One users who have already registered may need to reconnect their cards once to use them at Whole Foods.) And, of course, Amazon One users will be able to connect their Prime accounts to their scans to get the subscription. discounts on shopping service.
Amazon One will debut at Madison Broadway Whole Foods in Seattle as an additional payment option for customers, with the intention of expanding it to seven more Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area in the next few months. Amazon has not announced plans to continue building the palm-scanning payment system outside the Seattle area.
All of this, of course, assumes that you’re okay with Amazon building a growing database of biometric information about its customers, which some experts have expressed concern about. This is especially true because Amazon data – unlike other biometric security systems, such as Apple’s Face ID – is stored in the cloud, rather than locally secured on a particular device.