Amazon to let Whole Foods shoppers pay with a swipe of their palm
Apples and avocados are displayed at a Whole Foods store in New York City, US, August 28, 2017.
Amazon.com Inc said it is rolling out biometric technology at itsWholeFoodsstores around Seattle starting on Wednesday,lettingshopperspayfor items with a scan of theirpalm.
The move shows howAmazonis bringing some of the technology already in use at its namesake brick-and-mortar, Go and Books stores to the grocery chain it acquired in 2017.
The system, calledAmazonOne,lets customers associate a credit card with theirpalmprint. It offers a contact-less alternative to cash and cardpayments,Amazonsaid.
The deployment stops short of introducingAmazon's cashier-less technology atWholeFoods, which critics have said would result in job cuts.AmazonOne still requires scanning items at checkout, and the company said it will not impact jobs atWholeFoods.
Amazonsaid its biometric technology will be live at aWholeFoodsnear its headquarters in Seattle on Wednesday and will expand to seven more stores in the metro area in coming months.