Amazon has rolled out its palm payment technology, called Amazon One, at Portland area Whole Foods Market checkouts that can charge customers’ credit cards with a scan of their palm.Photo provided by Amazon

Amazon is rolling out roll out scanners at Portland area Whole Foods Market checkouts that can charge customers’ credit cards with a scan of their palm.

The technology has rolled out at the Whole Foods stores in Tigard, Hillsboro and the Fremont and Hollywood neighborhoods in Portland. It’s expected to arrive at the Pearl District and Laurelhurst locations in Portland later this week.

Amazon says it’s already launched the palm payment technology in Bend, Eugene and Tanasbourne, and it’s expected to arrive at remaining Whole Foods stores across Oregon in the coming weeks.

Customers must enroll in the program, called Amazon One, by inserting a credit card into a device and then hovering their palm, or both palms, over a lit-up circle on the device.

The Amazon One device then scans and records the customer’s “palm signature.” The company says the process “takes less than a minute.”

Items are still manually scanned by a cashier, or by the customer at self-checkouts. To pay, shoppers can hover their palm above the Amazon One device for about a second to make purchases.

The ecommerce giant touts the palm technology’s convenience, saying in a press release that customers won’t “have to fumble with their wallets and handbags to pull out credit cards at checkout counters anymore.”

The Amazon One contactless payment system was launched in late 2020 at Seattle Whole Foods stores and has since been introduced to stores in California, New York and Texas.

The company has also expanded Amazon One’s use beyond its own business and has rolled out the technology to third parties, including some Panera Bread restaurants and Hudson shops at airports in Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the technology has some consumer privacy watchdogs concerned. In 2021, a group of U.S. senators questioned Amazon’s data collection practices and specifically whether biometric data is being used for advertising and tracking purposes.

In a 2021 letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the senators argued that, unlike Apple or Samsung’s biometric systems that store the information on a user’s device, “Amazon One reportedly uploads biometric information to the cloud, raising unique security risks.”