Amazon is installing its palm-pay tech at all Whole Foods stores

After slowly rolling devices out at stores around the country, Amazon's palm-recognition service, Amazon One, is being stationed across all 500-plus of its Whole Foods Market locations and should be in place systemwide by the end of the year, the company announced Thursday.  

The service enables Amazon Prime members to pay by waving their hand over the palm-recognition device at Whole Foods checkout lanes, allowing them to forgo swiping a credit card or paying with cash.  

Whole Foods has already installed the devices at more than 200 locations, roughly double the approximately 100 stores where the devices were installed, as of April, when the company announced it was putting them in at 11 Denver-area locations.  

Palm readers are currently available at stores in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. 

Amazon One is also installed at the company’s Amazon Fresh grocery stores across the country, and the online retail giant has also launched the devices at restaurants like Panera Bread, sports venues, airport retailers like Hudson, and entertainment venues, such as Hollywood Casino in Detroit. 

Whole Foods noted in a press release that Amazon Prime members can pre-enroll online in roughly a minute by connecting their credit or debit cards to their Amazon One accounts. Members can complete enrollment in seconds at any location that uses Amazon One by simply hovering their palm over the device. They can also enroll in the store, the company noted. 

“We are always looking for new ways to delight our customers and improve the shopping experience,” said Leandro Balbinot, chief technology officer at Whole Foods Market, in a statement. “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.” 

Amazon emphasized that the palm signature used for payment “can’t be replicated to impersonate a customer.” The company explained the signature image uses both the palm print and the underlying vein structure in the hand to create a unique “numerical, vector representation” known as a palm signature. 

Customer data is protected in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, which is safeguarded by more than 300 cloud security tools and 100,000 security partners, Amazon noted in the press release. “In addition, Amazon One is protected by multiple security controls and has tamper-detection capabilities that will render the device unusable if meddled with,” the company added.