Amazon One expands using palm-scanning payments

Amazon One is expanding again, this time through its new palm-scanning technology. The company is now testing its palm-scanning payment technology in Whole Foods, starting with a single store in Amazon’s home city of Seattle.

Amazon is using Amazon One payment technology in its Amazon-branded stores in the Seattle area including Amazon Go and Amazon Books. The Whole Foods rollout, however, will make the most substantial expansion of the technology yet.

The company appears to have thousands of customers signed up with Amazon One.

Amazon’s palm-scanning technology analyzes “the minute characteristics of your palm, both surface-area details like lines and ridges as well as subcutaneous features such as vein patterns” to identify a customer. The technology allows them to use the biometric scan as an alternative, and faster, method of checking out, reducing the need for a credit card or cash.

Customers will be able to register their palms at kiosks in the supported Whole Foods stores, allowing them to associate a physical credit card to that palm scan. Amazon One users who have already registered may have to re-link their cards once to be able to use them at Whole Foods.

And of course, Amazon One users will be able to link their Prime accounts to their scans to get the subscription service’s discounts when shopping.