Amazon One expands to its largest area to date: the company is now testing its palm-scan 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 implementation of Whole Foods will make the biggest expansion of the technology to date. The company says thousands of customers have already signed up for Amazon One.
According to an Amazon FAQ, palm-scanning technology “analyzes the small features of your palm – both surface area features such as lines and ridges, as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” to identify a customer so they can use biometric scanning as an alternative. (and, theoretically, faster) method to check than to rummage around with a credit card or cash.
Customers can register their palms at kiosks in the Whole Foods support stores so they can link a physical credit card to the palm test. (Amazon One users who have already registered may need to reconnect their cards once to use them at Whole Foods.) And Amazon One users will of course be able to link their Prime accounts to their scans to get the subscription. service discount during shopping.
Amazon One will debut at Madison Broadway Whole Foods in Seattle as an additional payment option for customers, with plans to expand it to seven other Whole Foods stores in the Seattle area over the next few months. Amazon has not announced plans to further expand the palm-scan payment system outside 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 some experts are concerned about. This is especially true since Amazon’s data – unlike other biometric security systems, such as Apple’s Face ID – is stored in the cloud, rather than being stored locally on a specific device.