Wave goodbye to Amazon One.
The retail giant is shutting down its biometric palm-pay service in June, due to “limited customer adoption,” Amazon confirmed Thursday.
The Seattle-based company debuted the palm-pay technology in September 2020, calling it a “fast, convenient, contactless way” for people to pay for items, present a loyalty card or badge into work.
In the years since, Amazon One was deployed at a number of grocery and convenience stores, including Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market, Amazon Go, Energy Mart and more, as well as arenas, airports and some restaurants. In March, the service launched at NYU Langone Health facilities to authenticate identities for patient check-in.
“In response to limited customer adoption, we’re discontinuing Amazon One, our authentication service for facility access and payment,” an Amazon spokesperson said via e-mail. “All customer data associated with Amazon One will be securely deleted after the service ends.”
The platform will be disabled on June 3, though some retailers may remove their Amazon One devices before then, Amazon said.
Payment and entry services via credit card or QR code will not be impacted, the company said.
The announcement comes the same week Amazon announced it would shut down all of its Amazon Fresh grocery stores and Amazon Go convenience stores, saying it intends to focus on growing its Whole Foods Markets and same-day grocery delivery.
Amazon One works by analyzing multiple attributes to select distinct identifiers in each person’s “palm signature,” the retailer said. It is built on Amazon’s AWS cloud system.
While Amazon said the palm-pay service offered more privacy protection than other biometric options because of the lack of facial recognition, Amazon One has raised concerns from privacy advocates over the years.
In 2021, three U.S. senators sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy asking the retailer to be more transparent about how its biometric data is stored, according to media reports.
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