Amazon One lets users pay with their palm prints

Dive Brief:

On Tuesday, Amazon announced the launch of Amazon One, a bio-authentication tool that allows users to use their palm to pay for purchases or enter various locations. To start, the company is introducing the technology at two Amazon Go stores in Seattle, but the technology will be available for other retailers to use at the traditional checkout point-of-sale.
The feature allows consumers to link their palms with their credit cards, and they can do so with either one hand or both. Amazon's vision technology uses unique traits within people's palms to create a distinctive identifier associated with users' accounts, per the company statement.
Beyond Amazon Go stores, the company said it will offer the technology to third parties such as retailers, stadiums and office buildings. Customers do not have to have an Amazon account to use the technology, only a credit card and a mobile phone number, the company said.

Dive Insight:

As Amazon grows its payment technology and third party offerings, it also is expanding its own national footprint. The e-commerce giant recently debuted its Go Grocery and Fresh formats, with stores opening in Seattle and Southern California and more locations on tap in those markets as well as places like the Chicago and Washington, D.C., areas.

Amazon One isn't the only tool that the company has sold to third parties. Back in mid-March, the company began selling its cashierless technology to other retailers, allowing them to collect payments without having customers wait in a checkout line.

Besides collecting users' personal data for Amazon Go or Amazon One, the retailer is also harnessing users' voices. The company recently released new Amazon Echo and Fire TV Stick devices, which purport to have better voice recognition capabilities.

In its announcement, the company said it is in discussions with several potential customers, but didn't disclose any specific retailers that have sought Amazon One technology. To address consumers' privacy concerns, the company said that it protects users' palm prints by encrypting and sending them to a secure cloud location where their palm signatures are created. If customers want to delete their data, they can request to have their data deleted on the Amazon One device or online through one.amazon.com.