Amazon One palm payment tool expands to East Coast

UPDATE: May 10, 2021: Amazon One, which lets users pay with their palm prints, is now available in an Amazon Go store at 11 W. 42nd St. in New York City, an Amazon spokesperson told Grocery Dive. This marks the payment technology's East Coast debut. Amazon One is also available as a payment option at more than a dozen Amazon stores in the Seattle area, including Go Grocery, Books and 4-Star outlets as well as Whole Foods Market.

Dive Brief:

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is expanding Amazon One, which lets users pay with their palm prints, to Whole Foods Market stores.
The payment technology is now available at Whole Foods' Madison Broadway location in Seattle and will expand to seven other area locations in the coming months, Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, wrote in a blog post. Launched in September at two Amazon Go stores in Seattle, the bio-authentication tool uses computer vision technology to identify consumers based on the unique characteristics of their palms.
The announcement resolves speculation around when the e-commerce company would add cutting-edge checkout technology to Whole Foods.

Dive Insight:

By bringing the Amazon One tool to Whole Foods, Amazon may entice shoppers to head to the grocery chain, which has struggled with foot traffic in the past year.

At the start of the pandemic, Whole Foods saw its foot traffic plummet, and the grocery chain is still trying to catch up to its 2019 numbers. Whole Foods is starting to see steady week-over-week bumps in visits, but its total weekly visits were still down nearly 18% at the end of March compared to the same period in 2019, according to the latest report from Placer.ai.

Amazon One's debut at Whole Foods builds on Amazon's efforts in recent years to boost the chain's business with price cuts, Prime membership integration and, during the latest holiday season, in-store return options.

Since its launch in September, Amazon has added Amazon One to a dozen locations in the Seattle area, including 4-Star, Go, Go Grocery, Amazon Books and a pop-up location. To use Amazon One, consumers can link one or both palms to their credit cards and Amazon Prime accounts.

The expansions of Amazon One adds to Amazon’s growing list of new grocery technology, which includes launching in-garage grocery delivery in five cities last year; Alexa features and the Dash Cart for cashierless shopping at Fresh stores; and Go Grocery’s use of Amazon’s Just Walk Out autonomous checkout technology.