Amazon said it is rolling out biometric technology at its Whole Foods stores around Seattle starting on Wednesday, letting shoppers pay for items with a scan of their palm, according to Reuters. The company plans to add Amazon One as an option to seven additional Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle area over the coming months.
The move shows how Amazon is bringing some of the technology already in use at its namesake brick-and-mortar Go and Books stores to the grocery chain it acquired in 2017.
The system, called Amazon One, lets customers associate a credit card with their palm print. It offers a contactless alternative to cash and card payments, Amazon said in a blog post.
„After introducing the Amazon One service last September, we’ve added it as an entry and payment option at several Amazon stores in the Seattle area, including Amazon Go, Amazon Go Grocery, Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, and Amazon Pop Up. Thousands of customers have signed up for the service, and feedback has been great—customers have shared they appreciate how quick it is to enroll and use, and that its contactless nature has been helpful in our current environment,” Amazon says.
„Customers who are new to using Amazon One can sign up at any Amazon One kiosk or device in participating stores, and enrollment takes less than a minute. After they insert their credit card, customers hover their palm over the device and follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature being built in real-time for them by our computer vision technology. Customers will have the option to enroll with just one palm or both. And that’s it! Once enrolled, customers can use Amazon One to pay at participating Whole Foods Market stores in about a second or so.” the company added.
The deployment stops short of introducing Amazon’s cashier-less technology at Whole Foods, which critics have said would result in job cuts. Amazon One still requires scanning items at checkout, and the company said it will not impact jobs at Whole Foods.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
