Amazon's Whole Foods will now let shoppers pay by scanning the palm of their hand
Amazon One will be added to 7 additional Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle area
Amazon Inc. is making it easier for some Whole Foods shoppers to pay for their groceries – all they need to use is the palm of their hand.
The e-commerce giant announced Wednesday that it will begin rolling out its new palm recognition technology, Amazon One, at Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle area this spring.
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Its Madison Broadway location in Seattle will now be the first to use the service as a payment option. Amazon will then roll out the technology to seven additional Whole Foods locations throughout the area over the next few months, the Seattle-based company said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Once a customer is signed up for the service, they simply hold their palm over the Amazon One device. The customer, whose palm is associated with their credit card information, will then be charged.
"No two palms are alike, so we analyze all these aspects with our vision technology and select the most distinct identifiers on your palm to create your palm signature," Amazon wrote in the post.
Amazon claims the entire process will only take "about a second or so."
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The biometric data was first introduced in several Seattle stores last September, including Amazon Go, Amazon Go Grocery, Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star and Amazon Pop Up.
Any palm image proffered for use is never stored on the Amazon One device, the company said, citing security reasons.
The data is encrypted in a secured sector of the cloud that was custom-built by Amazon, and customers can also delete their Amazon One-related data permanently at any time.
People can sign up for an Amazon One account with a mobile phone number and credit card. An Amazon account isn’t necessary.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.