Amazon Expands Whole Foods Frictionless Shopping to New Metro Area
Amazon is deploying contactless shopping and payment solutions at 11 Whole Foods Market stores in a major U.S. city.
For the first time, select Whole Foods Market locations in the Denver are offering the Amazon One palm-based payment system that allows customers to use their palm to pay for purchases, as well as the Dash Cart smart shopping cart device. In an email to Chain Store Age, Amazon said Amazon One is now available at 11 Whole Foods Market stores in the Denver area.
In addition, in the coming weeks, Dash Cart will become available at one select Denver-area Whole Foods Market store. It will become the fourth Whole Foods Market store in the country to adopt this technology.
Meanwhile, all 16 Whole Foods locations in the larger Dallas-Fort Worth area offer the Amazon One palm payment option to their customers. More than 65 Whole Foods Market stores across California have rolled out Amazon One, following previous launches in Austin, Texas, and Seattle, as well as select stores in New York and Los Angeles.
Amazon One – How It Works
To sign up for Amazon One, first customers insert their credit card in the palm reading device. Next, they hover their palm over the device and follow the prompts to associate that card with the unique palm signature being built by the device’s computer vision technology in real time. Customers have the option to enroll with one palm or both.
Once customers have enrolled, they can enter Amazon One-enabled stores by holding their palm above the Amazon One device at entry for about a second or so. The technology evaluates multiple aspects of a customer’s palm. No two palms are alike, so Amazon One analyzes all these aspects with its vision technology and selects the most distinct identifiers on a palm to create a unique palm signature.
Whole Foods customers using Amazon One will shop like normal and at the end of their trip, they scan their palm at checkout to pay.
Dash Cart – How It Works
First announced in July 2020 and relaunched in an updated version in July 2022, the Dash Cart solution operates on a technology infrastructure similar to that supporting the Amazon Go cashierless store format, using a combination of computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion to identify items customers put in the cart and allow them to shop, pay for their items and leave without having to wait in a checkout line.
To use the new version of the Dash Cart, shoppers log in through a QR code in the Amazon or Whole Foods Market app, which allows them to sign in and begin using the cart. From there, shoppers place their bags (if using them) in the cart and start shopping, scanning their items using one of the cameras near the handlebar of the Dash Cart.
The cart uses a combination of computer vision algorithms and sensor fusion to help verify each item placed in—and removed from—the cart. The Dash Cart’s screen shows a real-time receipt of all items in the cart, and when shoppers are ready to check out, they exit the store through the Amazon Dash Cart lane and their payment is processed using the credit card associated with their Amazon account. Shoppers will receive an emailed receipt shortly after leaving the store.
The first certified-organic national grocer, Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods has more than 500 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Seattle-based Amazon, which is No. 2 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
This article first appeared on the site of sister publication Chain Store Age.
