Amazon One Will Be Added To Seven Additional Whole Foods Market Stores in the Seattle Area

Amazon One

As stated by Amazon's Dilip Kumar, vice president, Physical Retail & Technology, Amazon One will be added to seven additional Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle area over the coming months.

Kumar continued by saying; “over the past several years, we’ve focused on innovating on behalf of our customers to make their shopping trips easier and more effortless. We started with Just Walk Out technology in Amazon Go, and we have since brought that experience to new store formats and locations, and made it available as a service to third-party retailers to use in their stores.”

“We built the Amazon Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that helps customers in our Amazon Fresh grocery stores skip the checkout line and roll out when they’re done. Most recently, we introduced Amazon One, a fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to enter, identify, and pay - and I’m excited to talk about our latest expansion of Amazon One today.”

After introducing the Amazon One service last September, Amazon added it as an entry and payment option at several Amazon stores in the Seattle area, including Amazon Go, Amazon Go Grocery, Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, and Amazon Pop Up.

Thousands of customers have signed up for the service, and feedback has been considerable - customers have shared they appreciate how quick it is to enroll and use, and that its contactless nature has been helpful in their current environment.

Today, Amazon shared that customers at the Whole Foods Market store at Madison Broadway in Seattle will now be able to use Amazon One as a payment option at checkout. They also plan to add Amazon One as an option to seven additional Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle area over the coming months.

Customers who are new to using Amazon One can sign up at any Amazon One kiosk or device in participating stores, and enrollment takes less than a minute. After they insert their credit card, customers hover their palm over the device and follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature being built in real-time for them by our computer vision technology. Customers will have the option to enroll with just one palm or both. And that’s it!

Once enrolled, customers can use Amazon One to pay at participating Whole Foods Market stores in about a second or so. If customers have previously signed up for Amazon One at an Amazon store, they may need to re-insert their credit card one time at an Amazon One device in a Whole Foods Market so they can continue to use the service in those stores. And, if customers choose to link their Amazon One ID with their Amazon account, they can automatically get their Prime member discount as usual at Whole Foods Market.

A woman wearing a mask purchases items at a grocery store while a cashier wearing a mask stands behind glass. They are using touchless technology to check out.

“At Whole Foods Market, we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to improve the shopping experience for our customers,” said Arun Rajan, senior vice president of technology and chief technology officer at Whole Foods Market.

“Working closely with Amazon, we’ve brought benefits like Prime member discounts, online grocery delivery and pickup, and free returns to our customers, and we’re excited to add Amazon One as a payment option beginning today. We’re starting with an initial store at Madison Broadway in Seattle and look forward to hearing what customers think as we expand this option to additional stores over time.”

According to an Amazon FAQ, the 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” in order to identify a customer, allowing them to use the biometric scan as an alternative (and, theoretically, faster) method of checking out than fumbling around with 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.

All of this, of course, assumes that you’re OK with Amazon building an ever-larger database of biometric information linked to its customers, something that some experts have raised concerns about. That’s particularly true given that Amazon’s data - unlike other biometric security systems, like Apple’s Face ID - is stored in on the cloud, rather than secured locally on a specific device.

Beyond Amazon Go, Amazon expects to add Amazon One as an option in additional Amazon stores in the coming months. And, they believe Amazon One has broad applicability beyond their retail stores, so they also plan to offer the service to third parties like retailers, stadiums, and office buildings so that more people can benefit from this ease and convenience in more places.

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