Amazon Brings Palm-Paying Tech to Texas Whole Foods

About 160 locations throughout the U.S. have Amazon One capabilities.

November 14, 2022

DALLAS—Amazon is expanding its palm-recognition technology to 16 Whole Foods locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, reports the Dallas Morning News. The technology, called Amazon One, allows customers to pay with a wave of their hand.

Whole Foods stores in Irving and Highland Village will be the first to implement Amazon One, and Amazon plans to roll out the technology in the remaining locations in the coming weeks.

In August, Amazon launched its first broad rollout of the technology at more than 65 Whole Foods Markets in California. The company had tested Amazon One pay in Seattle, Austin and certain stores in Los Angeles and New York. About 160 locations have Amazon One capabilities, including select Whole Foods, Amazon Go convenience stores, Amazon Fresh grocery stores and the Amazon Style department store in Los Angeles.

Amazon launched Amazon One in September 2020. Along with payment, the service also can be used for presenting a loyalty card, entering a location like a stadium or badging into work. The technology is “designed to be highly secure and uses custom-built algorithms and hardware to create a person’s unique palm signature,” said Amazon.

According to Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director for the retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, consumers’ buying habits have been altered because Amazon, as a whole, makes shopping quicker and easier.

“Forty-five to 46% of consumers are shopping less at conventional grocery stores,” he told the Daily News. “And they’re typically buying more products because now they have more time.”

Amazon One is available at select Hudson Nonstop Stores in the Dallas Love Field and DFW airports.

Last month, Hudson announced that a store in the Los Angeles International Airport will be powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and Amazon One, while Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle announced the expanded use of Amazon One at three concession areas inside the arena, joining the four existing Just Walk Out technology and Amazon One-enabled stores, which opened in 2021.

According to the Morning News, grocer H-E-B has been testing its “fast-scan” technology at a San Antonio location. Customers use a device to scan their items as they shop, then check out at a fast-scan station.

At the 2022 NACS Show, industry pros from Pilot Travel Centers and Mach 1 outlined some best practices for incorporating self-checkout in convenience stores.

Convenience stores are adding self-checkout, as well as checkout-free technology. Chevron announced checkout-free shopping at Chevron’s ExtraMile store in San Ramon, California, by partnering with Grabango. Bp, MAPCO and GetGo Café+Market also have partnered with Grabango to integrate checkout-free technology into their stores.

Choice Market convenience stores in Denver offer self-checkout, walkout technology and an app, which all sync and communicate with each other. Choice Market recently opened an autonomous store at The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus that will be open 24/7.

NACS offers a free webinar on self-checkout innovations at c-stores. Pre- and post-pay fuel transactions, loyalty, cash payments and age verification are also discussed.

Read more about frictionless checkout systems in “Self-Checkout Strategies” in the March issue of NACS Magazine. And look for NACS Convenience Voices research findings on how customers perceive self-checkout in the upcoming December issue of NACS Magazine.

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