August 12, 2022
Amazon is poised to expand its Amazon One palm print checkout system to dozens of Whole Foods locations.
Amazon plans to expand to 65 Whole Foods stores across California, with the rollout set to begin in Malibu and Santa Monica. Other locations that will adopt the technology in the coming weeks include Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and the Bay Area.
The technology, which is part of the many radical checkout technologies that Amazon has unveiled, allows users at retail locations to check out at retail locations using only their palm prints after storing a scan of their hand through an interface on Amazon’s kiosks. The palm print data is encrypted and stored on Amazon’s servers.
Released in 2020, the technology has only been used by Amazon in its Amazon Go stores and now-closed Amazon Books retail locations and has also been used at several Whole Foods locations in the Seattle area.
Amazon One technology has been heavily criticized by privacy advocates and questioned lawmakers.
In a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, lawmakers including Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA), called on Jassy to provide details on how Amazon plans to expand its biometric payment system and whether the data collected will help the company target ads.
The sources for this piece include an article in ArsTechnica.
