Amazon One connects a buyer’s palm to the credit card, allowing them to pay without waiting in line.
Amazon
Amazon is expanding its palm-scanning payment system to a Whole Foods store in Seattle, the company announced Wednesday, the first of many launches planned elsewhere.
Amazon One, which debuted in September and is currently used in about a dozen physical Amazon stores, allows shoppers to pay for items by placing their palm over a scanner. The first time shoppers use the kiosk, they must insert a credit card to connect it with their palm print. But after that, buyers can pay simply by holding their hand over the kiosk.
Amazon One is distinct from the company’s Just Walk Out technology, which allows shoppers to pick up items and leave the store without going through a payment line. However, the two technologies can work together, and Amazon uses both at its homeless Amazon Go stores.
Amazon will initially launch Amazon One at Whole Foods in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, not far from the company’s headquarters, before launching the system at seven Whole Foods in Seattle in the coming months.
Palm scanning technology will be offered as just one of the many payment options at participating Whole Foods stores, Amazon said, and will not impact the store’s employee responsibilities.
Amazon purchased the food chain in 2017 for over $ 13 billion.
Amazon said it hopes to sell palm-scanning technology to other companies, such as retailers, stadiums and office buildings. In September last year, Amazon said it was in “active discussions with several potential customers.”
It is unclear whether Amazon has signed an agreement with third parties interested in using the system. The company says thousands of people have signed up to use it in Amazon stores.
As Amazon sought to expand and validate palm-scanning technology as a form of payment, privacy and security experts expressed concern about the dangers of handing over biometric data to companies.
Amazon claimed that it designed the system to be “extremely secure” and that it believes that palm scanning technology is more private than other biometric alternatives, such as facial recognition.