Amazon to let Whole Foods shoppers at Settle pay with a swipe of their palm

Amazon is extending its palm-scanning payment system to a Whole Foods outlet in Seattle. This biometric technology will allow buyers to pay for items by placing their palm over a scanning device. The company made this announcement on Wednesday, April 21st, saying that this is the first of many other locations planned to be rolled out soon.

Amazon One, as the system is called, was unveiled in September and has been in use at about twelve Amazon physical stores. Shoppers who visit the kiosk for the first time will have to link their credit card to a palm print. After that, they can make payments by simply holding their hands over the scanning device.

Amazon One is unique from the online retail company’s “Just Walk Out” technology, which allows shoppers to pick up items and walk out of the store without going through a checkout line. However, the two systems can operate at the same time. Amazon uses both of them at its stores where there are no cashiers.

Amazon will first release Amazon One at the Whole Foods in Seattle then roll out at seven Whole Foods centres in the coming months. The company said that the system will be offered as just one of many payment options at participating Whole Foods stores and won’t impact store employees’ job responsibilities. There are plans to sell the system to other retail companies and office buildings. A spokesperson said that the company is currently discussing with some potential customers.

There is no report that confirms if Amazon signed any contracts with third parties interested in using the system. “Thousands of people have signed up to use the palm-scanning technology at Amazon stores”, the company said.

As Amazon has sought to expand and validate palm-scanning technology as a form of payment, privacy and security experts have also raised concerns around the dangers of shoppers’ handing over biometric data to companies.

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