Amazon One connects a shopper’s palm to their credit card, allowing them to pay without standing in line.
Amazon
Amazon is adding a feature to its palm-based payment system that allows users to purchase alcohol by swiping their hand.
The system, called Amazon One, allows people to pay for items by placing their palm over a scanning device. To buy alcohol, users must upload a government-issued ID on the Amazon One site, the company wrote in a blog post on Monday. Amazon said it does not store user IDs and that a third-party vendor verifies the documentation.
Bartenders will be able to verify that an Amazon One user is of legal age via a “21+” message displayed when using the device, and by making a “visual match” of the user with a user-uploaded photo displayed on screen, according to the blog post .
Amazon introduced its palm swipe technology year 2020, frames the system as a way to make customers’ shopping experience faster and more efficient. It has introduced Amazon One in some of its Fresh supermarkets and Go convenience stores, along with select Whole Foods locations. Sports and entertainment venues have also embraced the technology, while Panera Bread started testing Amazon One at two of its restaurants earlier this year.
For starters, the Coors Field baseball stadium in Denver, Colo., will allow attendees to use Amazon One to purchase alcohol, Amazon said.
Amazon One and other payment systems that use biometric data have met with some shock from privacy advocates. Amazon argues palm recognition is more private than other biometric systems “because you cannot determine a person’s identity by looking at an image of their palm.”
[pub1]