Amazon’s palm reader offers a new way to pay at stores

Amazon already got rid of checkout lines at its brick-and-mortar Amazon Go stores. Now, it wants to make getting into those stores easier too. Last week, the retail giant started letting people use its latest biometric tech — a palm reader dubbed Amazon One — to enter two Amazon Go locations in Seattle. Amazon unveiled the new tech ahead of its annual Prime Day shopping event, which will take place Oct. 13-14 this year.

“Amazon One is a fast, convenient, contactless way for people to use their palm to make everyday activities like paying at a store, presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium, or badging into work more effortless,” Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, said Sept. 29 in a blog post. “The service is designed to be highly secure and uses custom-built algorithms and hardware to create a person’s unique palm signature.”

People can sign up for Amazon One at one of the company’s Amazon Go stores. Amazon said the process — which involves hovering your hand over an Amazon One device — takes less than a minute and it’ll associate a person’s credit card with their palm signature. People can enroll with just one palm or both. Once signed up, people can hold their palm above an Amazon One device to enter the Amazon Go stores. 

Amazon said it plans to expand the technology at its own stores in the coming months and also plans to offer Amazon One to third parties like retail sites, stadiums and office buildings.