Amazon One Deploying in 65 Whole Foods Markets Across California
Amazon is launching a broad roll out of Amazon One at Whole Foods Market stores following successful pilots in Seattle, Austin, New York, and Los Angeles. As a result, over 76 Whole Foods Market stores will be offering Amazon’s palm recognition and payment service.
To start, stores in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and Santa Monica will receive the payment tech, with plans to expand to more locations in LA, Orange County, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Santa Cruz in the coming weeks.
How the Tech Works
Consumers looking for expedited checkout will now be able to choose Amazon One rather than searching through their wallets and handbags for payment. Consumers can quickly enroll in the service by registering their palms and linking them to their credit or debit card. Once done, consumers can simply hover their palm over the Amazon One device at checkout and the linked card will be charged for the purchase.
Amazon confirms consumers’ identities using vision technology that evaluates multiple aspects of their palm, creating a signature using their most distinct identifiers. In order to protect customer data, Amazon said the device is protected using various security controls, and palm images are never stored on the Amazon One device. Instead, the images are encrypted and sent to a secure area in the cloud built specifically for Amazon One.
Earlier this year, Amazon introduced the new payment option at three Whole Foods Markets in Los Angeles, including Silver Lake, Irvine, and Playa Vista locations. It is also available at the newly-launched Amazon Style store in Glendale, the Just Walk Out technology-enabled Whole Foods Market store at Sherman Oaks, and at select Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores in California.
New Checkout Experiences Trending
The company has made strides in simplifying the checkout experience across its stores. For example, this past month, The company made updates to its Dash Carts to reflect customer feedback, improved computer vision and sensor fusion technology, and back-end innovation and testing. The updated Dash Cart is available at the Whole Foods Market store in Westford, Massachusetts, with plans to expand to more Whole Foods Market stores and many Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S.
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"As many of our customers return to their in-store grocery shopping routines, it's exciting to introduce new and unique ways for them to shop our stores," said Leandro Balbinot, chief technology officer for Whole Foods Market, during the launch. "We're thrilled that the newest version of Dash Cart will debut in our Westford store and can't wait to hear the feedback from our customers there."
Also, Amazon is expanding its checkout-free shopping within Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The company’s “Just Walk Out” service allows consumers to skip the checkout line by entering the store and simply scanning a QR code in their Amazon app.
