The new payment tech is making its debut in California's Whole Foods stores.
Amazon is rolling o9ut its palm scanning technology in more Whole Foods stores in California beginning Tuesday. The palm-reading payment tech will be available in 65 Whole Foods locations in Malibu, Montana Avenue, and Santa Monica this week and Orange County, Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Cruz in the weeks to come.
The Verge reported that this is Amazon's widest rollout yet and customers will now be able to set up their Amazon One account by registering their palm print on a kiosk or point of sale in any of the Whole Foods stores where the palm scanning technology is available.
Amazon vowed to fix its digital comic service known as Comixology four months after the company merged the platform with their other services. Amazon aims not only to address the issues at hand but also to add new ones while upgrading the existing ones.
How Amazon's Palm Scanning Technology Works
For customers to register, they must provide a payment card and phone number, accept Amazon's terms of service, and provide an image of their palms. Upon completion of the registration process, customers can take items to purchase and checkout using their palms, simply by hovering their hand over the device, and payment will automatically be processed.
Amazon's palm scanning technology was previously only available in a few Whole Foods stores in Austin, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle. But in California, Amazon ONe was also available at the company's Style fashion store in Glendale and some Fresh and Go locations, Engadget reported.
How Safe is Amazon's Palm Scanning Technology in Terms of User Privacy?
Amazon One is designed to streamline retail shopping in store, a similar goal that the company's camera-based Just Walk Out system attempts to achieve. But some may be concerned as to how Amazon's palm scanning technology stores and uses user information and data.
According to the company, the images of palms taken by the payment tech's kiosk are not stored locally but are encrypted and then sent to a cloud server specific to Amazon One, where an identifiable palm signature is generated.
Amazon continues to succeed in convincing users to provide their data in the name of convenience as privacy advocates are raising concerns as to how the company is gathering user data through Alexa, Ring smart cameras, doorbells, and its most recent acquisition, the room-mapping robot vacuum cleaner.
The Future of Payments Using Amazon's Palm Scanning Technology
Palm-reading kiosks in Whole Foods is just the beginning for Amazon, whose ambitions include creating a platform for an "all-purpose global identity," the San Francisco Standard reported. In 2021, the company announced that it partnered with ticketing giant AXS to use Amazon One as a contactless entry for event participants.
But not many people are too happy with this futuristic payment technology. Privacy watchdogs warned that this may be the start of a "Black Mirror" type of dystopia. Digital rights nonprofit Fight For The Future argued that Amazon's palm scanning technology may lead to law enforcement or the government using this data to cross-check with data on immigration or police databases, which would then cause "police harassment, violent arrests, and ICE raids at shows."
Fight For The Future added that "personal, unchangeable bodily data" captured by Amazon can also fall into the hands of threat actors who have permanent access to it. While Amazon said it was very careful in handling customers' data, it has been proven that the company gave Ring camera footage to the police without the owner's consent, a congressional report revealed.
Related Article: Over 700 Amazon Workers in the UK Walked Out Over Pay Increase Dispute
