Palm-reading checkout hits Denver Whole Foods Markets

Whole Foods customers in the Denver area can now pay with the swipe of their hand at the checkout lane, according Amazon, the grocer’s parent company.  

The company announced that its Amazon One palm-recognition service is now available at 11 Whole Foods Market stores in metro Denver. That includes locations at Belmar, Cherry Creek, Colfax, Colorado Boulevard, Governor’s Ranch, Highlands Ranch, Ideal Market Denver, SouthGlenn, Tamarac, Union Station, and Washington Park. 

The SouthGlenn store will also be the first in the city—and only the fourth location in the country—to offer Amazon Dash Cart, which is a smart shopping cart technology that automatically tallies the cost of the items in the cart and charges them to the shopper’s Amazon credit or debit account without the need for a palm scan. 

Shoppers must enroll in the Amazon One program, which Amazon says takes less than a minute, in order to use the service. They can then pay quickly by hovering their palm over an Amazon One scanner, for a second or so, at the checkout lane.   

“When you hold your palm over the Amazon One device, the technology evaluates multiple aspects of your palm,” the company noted in a statement. “No two palms are alike, so we analyze all these aspects with our vision technology and select the most distinct identifiers on your palm to create your palm signature.” 

Amazon added that it chose palm recognition as its preferred method of biometric identification because “you can’t determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm,” the company stated.  

“It also requires an intentional gesture—hovering your palm over an Amazon One device—to use,” the company said. “And it’s contactless, which we think customers will appreciate.” 

The Denver rollout is the most recent news from Amazon, which has made the service available at select Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh, and more than 100 Whole Foods Market stores in California, Texas, Washington state and New York.  

Amazon also recently launched the service at Panera Bread and at various travel retailers at airports in Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville and Los Angeles. It’s also available at sports stadiums, such as T-Mobile Park and Lumen Field (both in Seattle) and entertainment venues, such as Hollywood Casino in Detroit, the company noted in a statement.