Amazon One expands into its largest area to date: The company is now testing its palm scanning payment technology at Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle.
The company uses Amazon One payment technology in its Amazon stores in the Seattle area (including Amazon Go and Amazon Books), but the Whole Foods rollout will mark the most substantial expansion of the technology to date. The company says thousands of customers have already signed up with Amazon One.
According to an Amazon FAQ, the palm scan technology analyzes “the tiny features of your palm – surface details such as lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” to identify a customer so they can use the biometric scan as an alternative (and, theoretically, , faster) method of checking out than messing around with a credit card or cash.
Customers can register their palms at kiosks in the supported Whole Foods stores so that they can associate a physical credit card with that palm scan. (Amazon One users who have already registered may need to re-link their cards once to use them at Whole Foods.) And of course, Amazon One users can link their Prime accounts to their scans to get the subscription service discounts when shopping.
Amazon One will debut on Madison Broadway Whole Foods in Seattle as an additional payment option for customers, with plans to expand to seven other Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area in the coming months. Amazon has not announced plans to further expand its palm scanning payment system outside of the Seattle area.
All of this, of course, assumes that you’re okay with Amazon building an ever-expanding database of biometric information linked to its customers, something that some experts have expressed concerns about. That’s especially true given that unlike other biometric security systems such as Apple’s Face ID, Amazon’s data is stored in the cloud rather than being secured locally on a specific device.