Amazon's New App Lets You Scan Your Palm to Pay at Whole Foods, Panera Bread and More

Amazon today launched the Amazon One app, which is designed to allow customers to scan their palms to make device-free purchases at Whole Foods, Panera Bread, and 150 third-party locations in stadiums, airports, fitness centers, and convenience stores.


Prior to the launch of the app, signing up for Amazon One had to be done in a physical location with an Amazon One device. The app lets customers create a profile, take a photo of their palm, and add a payment method. Finishing sign-up will still require an initial interaction with an Amazon One machine.

Amazon One can be used for payment, entry to venues, age verification, and loyalty rewards. The service uses generative AI to match a camera phone photo of a person's palm to near-infrared imagery from an Amazon One scanner.

The AI system is able to pair palm and vein imagery to create a unique, numerical vector representation that is used for identity matching. Amazon says that it is 99.99 percent accurate.

Palm images taken with the app are encrypted and sent to a secure Amazon One domain in the AWS cloud. Amazon says the service is convenient for consumers and businesses, and that it sees many repeat users at Whole Foods. Amazon One can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Tag: Amazon

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Top Rated Comments

Mr. Heckles Avatar
14 months ago
No thanks. Amazon having my hand print, what could go wrong?
Score: 54 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dreamerstree Avatar
14 months ago
Mark of the beast much?
Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Supermallet Avatar
14 months ago
Oh HELL no
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Unity451 Avatar
14 months ago

Amazon says the service is convenient for consumers and businesses, and that it sees many repeat users at Whole Foods.
China, is that you?
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple_Robert Avatar
14 months ago
People that claim they can read your palm are soothsayers and not to be trusted.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Keymaster Avatar
14 months ago
Um, 99.99% accurate means a on in 10,000 chance it will confuse your palm with someone else. If there are a million users, then 100 other people could use your account. And, what does it do with dirty hands, or a ring you happen to wear that day, or if you have a paper cut? How about a picture of your hand used by someone else? It sure isn't as secure as Apple's face recognition software, and that's even without considering how this ends up in the cloud somewhere instead of being kept on device...you can't use it if the internet is down of there's a connection issue.

Seems pretty half baked, with Amazon trying to use "AI" to make it sound a lot smarter than it apparently is.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)