Amazon speeds up palm recognition payment

At a time when Amazon is quietly winding down its checkout-free supermarket experiment, last week the American group made official the acceleration of its offer enabling retailers to charge customers by palm recognition.

US consumers (the device is not yet available in Europe) can now download the Amazon One application, on which the palm of their hand can be linked to their Amazon account. Previously, this fingerprint creation could only be done at an equipped point of sale. This step was a prerequisite for extending the system to a larger number of shops, to which palm recognition devices are offered.

Launched in 2021, the Amazon One payment method is said to have been used more than 8 million times in the more than 500 Whole Foods shops owned by Amazon in the United States. But the identification and payment device has also reportedly found its way to 150 third-party shops, stadiums, airports and gyms.

“More and more businesses are adopting Amazon One because their customers appreciate the speed, convenience and contactless nature of palm recognition,” says Amazon. Amazon assures that palm data will never be passed on to third parties, while transactions will not be used for marketing purposes.

This payment device is taking on a strategic role for Amazon in the point-of-sale equipment market. Having already closed a third of its checkout-free shops a year ago, the company has just told The Information that this “Just walk out checkout” feature will even disappear from the remaining shops. Costly and complex to set up, the solution was struggling to make inroads with third-party retailers.