Pay with a wave of your hand is coming to Amazon’s Whole Foods

NEW YORK — Amazon will let customers at all of its Whole Foods stores pay with a simple wave of their hand.

The company announced Thursday that it is bringing its Amazon One palm recognition system to all of its more than 500 Whole Foods stores by the end of the year.

[Whole Foods operates seven stores in the Triangle and multiple locations across North Carolina.]

Amazon rolled out the technology in 2020, and it’s currently available at more than 200 Whole Foods stores. Panera Bread, Hudson airport stores, and sports stadiums such as Coors Field in Colorado also offer the technology.

Whole Foods customers who choose to use Amazon One will no longer need their wallet or a phone to pay — they can simply hover their palm over an Amazon One device.

To use the service, customers will give Whole Foods their credit or debit card information to link their palm print.

Some privacy experts have raised concerns about Amazon One and sharing biometric data.

In 2021, three US senators wrote to Amazon questioning the company about the technology, including how the tech giant could use consumer data for advertising and tracking and customer privacy more broadly.

“Amazon’s expansion of biometric data collection through Amazon One raises serious questions about Amazon’s plans for this data and its respect for user privacy,” the senators wrote.

Amazon says customer palm data is safeguarded in its Amazon Web Services cloud and it does not share palm data with third parties.

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