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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Amazon One

Forget Getting Carded. Amazon Wants to Scan Your Palm To Make Sure You’re Of Age

Attention all baby-faced twenty-somethings who regularly get carded buying drinks: You may soon face a new high-tech twist on the age-old right of passage in the form of palm-scanning.

At least, that’s if Amazon has its way. According to the company, they’ve just added age verification to their Amazon One palm bio-authentication platform. According to a blog post about the new capability, customers enrolled in Amazon One can use age verification by uploading a photo of the front and back of their government-issued ID, such as their driver’s license, and a selfie. Once signed up, customers will no longer have to show ID when buying drinks at participating outlets.

When in a store or drinking establishment, customers can show they are of age by hovering their palm over an Amazon One device. A “21+” message and the customer-uploaded selfie will appear on the screen. From there, the bartender confirms the photo on their screen is the same as the customer’s and proceeds with the sale.

Bars and their customers might see the benefit of using Amazon’s tech-forward solution, especially if it can mean shorter lines. Bars might also save employee resources otherwise dedicated to carding customers. That said, I’m not sure your local watering hole is ready to install a palm scanner just yet.

While some may also be leery of putting too much of their personal data into the hands of big corporate tech, my guess is digital natives who are ok with sharing info online might prefer the convenience of using bio-authentication methods like palm print authentication. Amazon is also quick to point out that they don’t store users’ driver’s licenses in their system, and the IDs are verified by an ISO 27001–certified identity verification provider (ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security). However, they do store a copy of your palm information, which may still be too much for privacy-concerned customers freaked out about bio-authentication.

For those who are interested in getting palmed, you can check it out next time you catch a Rockies game, as Amazon has installed the age verification-enabled Amazon One In Coors Field at the SandLot Brewery and the Silver Bullet Bar.

Scoop: Starbucks Trialing Amazon’s Palm Payment System in the Seattle Market

Starbucks is trialing Amazon’s biometric payment system, Amazon One, in the Seattle market. The system, which allows customers to pay in-store with the scan of a palm, was spotted in a Starbucks north of the company’s Seattle headquarters in Edmonds, Washington.

To sign up to use the system, users can pre-enroll at the Amazon One website or inside Starbucks at the Amazon One kiosk. Since I didn’t already have an Amazon One account, I decided to sign up in the coffee shop. The kiosk prompted me to scan the barcode within the Starbucks app on my phone to identify my Starbucks account and recognize my form of payment. From there, it asked me to hover both my left and right palms above the scanner, one after the other. Once each palm was scanned, I was ready to go. It had taken all of about two minutes to sign up.

Since I was already there, I figured I’d try it out. I got in line and asked the barista for an iced tea. When asked for payment, I hovered my palm above the scanner until it recognized it, and that was that.

Paying for a coffee with my palm at Starbucks

While Starbucks has trialed Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology in the past with Starbucks/Just Walk Out combination concept stores in the New York City market, we were told this is the first time Amazon One has been trialed in an existing Starbucks location.

When I asked a barista if many folks had signed up to use the technology, he shook his head.

“Not yet. Some people were kinda creeped out by it.”

And that’s before they even read the small print. When I checked out the terms of service (which you can find on the Amazon One website during signup), the small print told me the system would store my palm signature, including on servers that may be outside of my country:

 The Service streams data to the cloud when you interact with an Amazon One device and stores your palm signature to authenticate you and provide, personalize, and improve the Service. This information may be stored on servers outside the country in which you live.

While using biometric data doesn’t both me that much, I know some do not like the idea. The small print tells Amazon One users they can delete their account whenever they want by deleting their Amazon One ID, which can be done within the app or through this website. The small print also says the system will automatically delete a user’s palm signature if they have not interacted with an Amazon One device in two years.

It won’t be a surprise if this is a sign that there will soon be an Amazon One palm-pay system at other Starbucks. Both Starbucks and Amazon often trial new technologies in the Seattle market, so there’s a good chance they are seeing how this goes before rolling it out to more stores nationwide.

Amazon Adds Pay-With-Your-Palm Service to Whole Foods Store in Seattle

Amazon announced today that it is bringing the Amazon One palm-scanning payment technology to Whole Foods stores in Seattle. The move marks the first use of the biometric system at a non-Amazon branded store.

Launched last September, Amazon One allows people to connect a credit card (and Amazon Prime account, of course) with a scan of their palm. Once scanned, customers can then pay for items at Amazon One-enabled stores simply by waving their hand over a special terminal at checkout.

As of March 2021, Amazon One was available in 12 Amazon stores in the Seattle area including Amazon Go, Go Grocery, and Amazon 4-Star. Starting today, Amazon One will be available at the Madison Broadway in Seattle Whole Foods, and the company says it will be expanding the program to seven more Seattle area Whole Foods locations in the coming months.

The addition of Amazon One at Whole Foods isn’t a surprise, given that Amazon owns Whole Foods. But it’s further illustration of how Amazon is leveraging its deep technological capabilities to reshape shopping experiences — and putting pressure on other brick-and-mortar retailers to up their own checkout experiences.

Amazon has developed a number of different systems to make checkout more frictionless. Famously, Amazon Go kicked off the era of “just walk out” cashierless checkout technology, which lets customers go into the store, grab what they want and get charged automatically upon exit. Amazon has also developed its Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that allows for cashierless checkout at its stores.

Amazon also aims to license its various technologies to third parties. For instance, the company created a cashierless airport convenience store with the Hudson’s brand. And in the FAQ accompanying today’s Amazon One news, the company says it is in active discussions with several potential customers to use the palm payment system.

There are a number of startups looking to bring their own brand of cashierless checkout to retail (and help stave off Amazon). Companies like Zippin and Grabango install cameras and sensors to re-create the same type of just walk out shopping experience. And there are a number of smart shopping cart companies including Caper, Supersmart and Veeve.

If you want to learn more about the future of frictionless checkout at retail, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation virtual summit on May 18th. We’ll have speakers from Zippin, Nomitri and many more, so get your ticket today!

Amazon Expanding it Palm Pay System to More Amazon Stores in the Seattle Area

Amazon said today via an email to The Spoon that it is bringing its Amazon One pay-with-your-palm biometric identification and payment system to an additional three physical retail locations in the Seattle area.

Launched last September, Amazon One scans a user’s palm for things like gaining entrance to a store or facilitating payment at checkout. Users just need to hold their hand over the Amazon One device and associate their palm print with a credit card and mobile phone number (or an Amazon account, of course).

With this expansion, 12 Amazon retail locations will be using Amazon One including a number of Amazon Gos, Go Grocery, Amazon 4-Star, Amazon Books and Amazon Pop-Ups.

Admittedly, the addition of Amazon One payment to just three of Amazon’s own stores is not earth-shattering news. But it adds to what has already been an incredibly busy year in the cashierless/contactless checkout space. Startups like Nomitri and IMAGR have come out of stealth. Standard Cognition raised $150 million. And AiFi partnered with Wundermart to build a thousand cashierless checkout stores.

Amazon, however, remains the 800-pound gorilla in the cashierless checkout space. It kicked off the movement in earnest with its first Go convenience stores a little more than three years ago. And Amazon is licensing its cashierless checkout tech to other retailers. Airport store chain, Hudson, recently opened its first cashierless store powered by Amazon, with plans to open more. Amazon’s marketing flat-out says the company has big plans for expanding the use of its palm payment to other venues like stadiums, restaurants and more. So it could find its way into more non-Amazon stores in the near future.

We’re also starting to see biometrics implemented in other cashierless checkout systems. Zippin’s latest store in Japan adds a layer of biometric technology from Fujitsu that allows users to scan their palm to gain entrance and facilitate payment.

Of course, it remains to be seen just how willing consumers are handing over their biometric data to Amazon. Knowing what I purchase on a regular basis is one thing. Knowing the fine details of my exact palm print? That’s quite another.