Dive Brief:
- Amazon’s new palm recognition and payment service, Amazon One, is expanding to 65 Whole Foods Market locations across California, making it the first broad rollout of the new technology at the specialty grocer, according to an emailed press release on Tuesday.
- Whole Foods will add the technology to locations across the Los Angeles area before expanding to additional parts of the city as well as Orange County, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Santa Cruz.
- The expanded rollout follows the introduction of Amazon One at select Whole Foods stores this spring, and continues parent company Amazon’s drive to inject more of its technology into the specialty chain.
Dive Insight:
The Amazon One launch across Whole Foods locations in California began Tuesday in three Los Angeles area stores in Santa Monica, Malibu and Montana Avenue. The payment technology allows customers to link their palm to their debit or credit cards so, when shopping is complete, the checkout process involves simply hovering their hand over an Amazon One device.
Amazon is also using Amazon One in tandem with its Just Walk Out seamless checkout technology in some Whole Foods stores as well as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations, where it serves as a way of identifying shoppers before they enter the sales floor.
Prior to this large-scale rollout, Amazon One first rolled out at Whole Foods Markets in Seattle, Austin and select stores in New York beginning in April.
In May, Amazon One entered the grocery chain in the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Silver Lake, Playa Vista and Irvine. Aside from Whole Foods markets, Amazon One is also available to use in the company’s new Amazon Style store located in Glendale, California.
Amazon continues to roll out cutting-edge payment and checkout technology at Whole Foods stores in addition to its Fresh and Go stores. A few Whole Foods locations now feature the Just Walk Out system, which lets shoppers bypass the checkout lane once they’re done shopping. Last month, Amazon announced it’s adding a new-and-improved Dash Cart to select Whole Foods stores as well as Fresh locations.
