Amazon is bringing its palm-reading biometric identification system to a Whole Foods store in Seattle, the company announced Wednesday, expanding on the rollout of technology that had previously been available at select Amazon retail locations.
The Amazon One contactless system is being added today as a payment option at the Madison Broadway Whole Foods.
The technology first debuted last September as an entry and payment method at Amazon Go convenience stores in Seattle. It has since been added to additional Go stores and other locations, such as Amazon Go Grocery and Amazon Books. It works by scanning the palms of participating customers, giving them an alternative to the regular process of using a QR code in an app to check in or another method to pay and check out.
Customers sign up by linking a scan of their “palm signature” to a credit card, and in a blog post, Amazon VP of physical retail and technology Dilip Kumar said “thousands of customers” have joined the service. He said Amazon One will be added to seven additional Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area over the coming months.
Amazon says the technology is intended as an additional payment option at checkout and that Whole Foods employees’ jobs will not be impacted by the addition of the tech.
Amazon One is a part of a growing number of advances Amazon is testing in the physical retail space. The tech giant started with “Just Walk Out” technology at Go stores, relying on an array of cameras and sensors to allow shoppers to select items and leave stores without waiting in checkout lines. Amazon also introduced the Dash Cart for its Amazon Fresh stores, a smart shopping cart that also senses what customers are picking up.
PREVIOUSLY: Our first-hand experience with Amazon’s new palm reader, and what it says about the future of retail
After acquiring Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, Amazon dramatically expanded its physical retail footprint and its push into the grocery space. In the time since, Amazon has introduced a number of its Prime membership benefits and other innovations at the stores.
Amazon envisions broad long-term adoption of the Amazon One technology for everything from in-store payments to accessing office buildings to entering sports stadiums. Amazon’s use of biometrics in stores and other commercial settings promises to attract scrutiny at a time of heightened awareness of digital security and privacy, testing the limits of customer trust in the company.
The company offers a long list of assurances about the security of the data. Amazon is encrypting the palm scans in the cloud, rather than keeping it on the scanning device, and promising people who sign up that they can delete their data from the cloud whenever they want.