Shoppers can soon pay for groceries by waving their hand – but only at one major supermarket

Soon Whole Foods customers won’t need their phones or wallets when shopping for groceries anymore.

Amazon announced that it would be expanding its ‘palm payment’ technology to all Whole Foods stores by the end of the year.

Called Amazon One, it’s a form of biometric payment technology that identifies a shopper’s palm and links it to an Amazon account or credit card.

On Thursday, the tech giant said that all 500+ Whole Foods Market locations in the US will offer Amazon One for payment by the end of the year.

‘This means Whole Foods Market customers who choose to use Amazon One will no longer need their wallet or even a phone to pay—they can simply hover their palm over an Amazon One device,’ said Amazon.

For Prime members who link their Amazon One profile with their Amazon account, savings will automatically be applied.

Amazon One was first introduced in 2020 and is currently available at select Amazon Go stores and Whole Foods locations in the US.

Initially it was only available in Amazon and Whole Food stores in the Seattle area, where the company is based.

But eventually Amazon hopes to make this technology universally accepted. The tech giant wants to sell it to other companies who could install it in shops, offices and sports arenas.

Amazon says thousands of customers have already signed up for the service.

‘Since we’ve introduced Amazon One at Whole Foods Market stores over the past two years, we’ve seen that customers love the convenience it provides, and we’re excited to bring Amazon One to all of our customers across the U.S,’ said Leandro Balbinot, chief technology officer at Whole Foods Market.

The online retailer is also pitching the technology as a safer option for businesses and customers. Unlike a credit card or password, an Amazon One palm signature can’t be replicated to impersonate a customer.

That’s because Amazon One does not use raw palm images to identify a person. Instead, it looks at both the palm and underlying vein structure to create a unique numerical, vector representation—called a ‘palm signature’—for identity matching.

While privacy professionals may raise an eyebrow, Amazon says the whole process is safe and secure. A person’s ‘palm signature’ is stored securely on the cloud, and customers can delete Amazon One data at any time.

‘Amazon One is a fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to make everyday activities like paying at a store, presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium, or badging into work more effortless,’ Dilip Kumar, vice president of Physical Retail & Technology at Amazon said in a blog post.

While there are a number of biometric identification options, Amazon said it chose palm recognition as it is more private than some biometric alternatives because you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.

Also, it requires an intentional gesture like hovering your palm over a device to use.

Amazon has not yet announced plans to bring Amazon One to the UK. However, the company has said that it is exploring opportunities to expand the technology to other countries.

If Amazon One does come to the UK, it is likely that it will be available at select Amazon Go stores and Whole Foods locations.

The technology is still relatively new and the company may be waiting to see how it is received in the United States before expanding it to other countries.

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