Amazon is adding convenient payment options to 11 Whole Foods Markets in the Denver area with the rollout of its Amazon One palm recognition solution. Additionally, the SouthGlenn, Colo. store will soon offer the Amazon Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that lets shoppers skip the checkout line altogether.
Shoppers can use the Amazon One service to check out without needing to pull out their wallets or purses. Enrolled customers simply hover their palm over the Amazon One device to have a linked card automatically pay for their purchases. Enrollment takes less than a minute and can be handled in-store or online.
Amazon already has rolled out the palm payment technology to more than 100 Whole Foods stores in California, Texas, Washington State and New York, as well as select Amazon stores. The technology also is being adopted by other retail partners, including several Hudson airport stores (the companies also collaborated on a c-store concept with Just Walk Out technology); several sports stadiums, including T-Mobile Park (home of the Seattle Mariners), Lumen Field (home of the Seattle Seahawks) and NASCAR Raceway in Phoenix; and Panera Bread restaurants.
The Amazon Dash Carts have been available at Amazon Fresh Stores since 2020 and are now rolling out to select Whole Foods locations — SouthGlenn will be the fourth. Dash Carts let shoppers log in through a QR code in the Whole Foods Market app, at which point they can start shopping. The technology scans items in real time and provides a receipt of all items in the cart. Customers can walk through a dedicated Amazon Dash Cart lane to check out to have their purchase charged to a credit card associated with their Amazon account, with the receipt emailed shortly after they leaving the store.
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The expansion of payment technology is another sign that Amazon isn’t abandoning brick-and-mortar, particularly grocery, despite pulling back from some store concepts in late 2022. CEO Andy Jassy has since stated that the retail giant is ready to “go big” on brick-and-mortar as customer behaviors stabilize in the post-pandemic environment.
