Amazon brings palm payment tech to all Whole Foods stores

For Whole Foods shoppers, payment is now in the palm of their hands.

Amazon announced in a blog post yesterday that it’s expanding Amazon One, its palm recognition payment tech that links credit card info to a shopper’s “palm signature,” to all 500+ US Whole Foods locations by the end of the year. The tech was already available at ~200 stores, and Whole Foods CTO Leandro Balbinot said in the post that “customers love the convenience it provides.”

• Amazon Prime members can also link their accounts to their Amazon One profile to secure discounts with a wave of their hand, the company said.

Amazon introduced the tech in 2020—and Retail Brew tested it out in 2021. Since then, more and more businesses, in addition to its own Amazon Fresh stores, have added the biometric checkout tech, which Amazon says has now been used more than 3 million times. Panera became its first national restaurant partner in March, using Amazon One for payment and loyalty programs. It’s also used at Coors Field for age verification, as well as travel retailers like Hudson in airports across the country.

The e-commerce giant has used Whole Foods to deploy several new checkout solutions since it acquired the natural grocer in 2017. Last year, it introduced Just Walk Out tech to two locations, and rolled out updated Dash Cart smart carts to a Massachusetts Whole Foods location, adding them to locations in several new cities including Denver, Colorado, this spring.