Amazon Whole Foods will have a payment system for palm scanning

Amazon One connects a customer’s palm to their credit card so they can 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 planned rollouts in other locations.

Amazon One, which debuted in September and is currently used in about a dozen brick-and-mortar Amazon stores, allows customers to pay for items by placing their palm over a scanning device. The first time shoppers use the kiosk, they have to enter a credit card to associate it with their palm print. But after that, shoppers can simply pay by holding their hand over the kiosk.

Amazon One is distinct from the company’s Just Walk Out technology, which allows customers to pick up items and leave the store without having to pass through a cash register. However, the two technologies can work together, and Amazon uses them both in its checkout-less Amazon Go stores.

Amazon will initially roll out 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.

The palm scanning technology will be offered as just one of many payment options at participating Whole Foods stores, Amazon said, and will not affect the job responsibilities of store associates.

Amazon acquired the supermarket chain in 2017 for more than $ 13 billion.

Amazon has said it hopes to sell the palm scanning technology to other companies such as retailers, stadiums and office buildings. Last September, Amazon said there were “active discussions with several potential customers.”

It is unclear whether Amazon has entered into agreements with third parties interested in using the system. The company says thousands of people have signed up to use it at Amazon stores.

While Amazon has sought to expand and validate palm scanning technology as a form of payment, privacy and security experts have also raised concerns about the dangers of customers passing biometric data to businesses.

Amazon has maintained that it designed the system to be “highly secure” and considers palm scanning technology to be more private than other biometric alternatives such as facial recognition.

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