Amazon expands Whole Foods contactless payment across California
Amazon is making its Amazon One palm payment shopping experience available at a new set of Whole Foods Market stores.
More than 65 Whole Foods Market stores across California will soon offer the Amazon One palm-based payment system that allows customers the option to use their palm to pay for purchases. This is the first broad roll out of Amazon One at Whole Foods Market stores following previous launches in Seattle, Austin, and select stores in New York and Los Angeles.
The rollout of Amazon One in California begins Tuesday, Aug. 9, with the service coming to Malibu, Montana Avenue and Santa Monica Whole Foods Market stores in the Los Angeles area. In the coming weeks, the palm payment service will become available at more Whole Foods Market stores across California including other parts of Los Angeles; as well as Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, and Santa Cruz.
To sign up for Amazon One, first customers insert their credit card in the palm reading device. Next, they hover their palm over the device and follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature being built by the device’s computer vision technology in real time. Customers have the option to enroll with one palm or both.
Once customers have enrolled, they can enter Amazon One-enabled stores by holding their palm above the Amazon One device at entry for about a second or so. The technology evaluates multiple aspects of a customer’s palm. No two palms are alike, so Amazon One analyzes all these aspects with its vision technology and selects the most distinct identifiers on a palm to create a unique palm signature.
Whole Foods customers using Amazon One will shop like normal and at the end of their trip, they scan their palm at checkout to pay. Learn more about how Amazon One works here.
Besides the previously implemented Los Angeles stores, Amazon One is currently available as a payment option at select Whole Food Market locations in the Seattle and Austin areas, at the Manhattan West store in New York City, and at all seven Whole Foods market locations n the Austin area in the coming weeks. The recent Austin rollout includes Whole Foods Market stores in the Arbor Trails, Domain, East Austin, Lamar, Gateway, Bee Cave, and Cedar Park neighborhoods.
Amazon One is also available as an entry and payment option at select Amazon Go stores, select Amazon Fresh stores (including a new location in Thousand Oaks, Calif.), and several third-party locations around the country. In addition, Amazon licenses the technology to select third-party retailers. Examples include travel retailer Hudson’s deployment at Dallas Love Field Airport, as well as stores at sporting/entertainment venues including New York-based UBS Arena and Amazon’s own Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.