Amazon to Bring Palm-Payment Tech to All Whole Foods Stores This Year

Amazon is expanding its innovative palm-scanning payment system, Amazon One, to all of its Whole Foods stores across the United States by the end of this year. The biometric technology allows shoppers to enter and pay for items by simply placing their palm over a scanning device linked to their stored credit card.

The company initially introduced this system in its cashierless Amazon Go stores and later extended it to select Whole Foods locations. Now, with more than 200 Whole Foods stores already equipped with Amazon One, the technology will be available in all approximately 500 upscale grocer locations in the coming months.

Amazon reported a significant surge in demand for its palm-scanning payment technology, recording 3 million uses of Amazon One. As a result, the company is marketing this technology to third parties, with deals signed for installation at airport stores, sports stadiums, concert venues, and even popular bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread, which began testing it at some of its stores earlier this year. The Coors Field baseball stadium in Denver also adopted the palm scanning device to enable attendees to buy alcohol.

To use the service, Amazon customers will need to register their palm print using a scanner at the store and link their debit or credit card to it. Subsequently, they can pay for their purchases by simply scanning their palm at the checkout.

Participation in the system is optional, and Amazon ensures that the palm prints are encrypted and securely stored in the cloud rather than on-device. With its solution gaining popularity and becoming more widely available, Amazon is significantly expanding its presence in the physical store technologies market while solidifying its position in the biometric payments sector — though it’s worth noting that Amazon has already run up against legal issues over its biometric technology’s alleged violations of biometric privacy laws.

Source: CNBC

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July 24, 2023 – by the FindBiometrics Editorial Team