Whole Foods Ditching Its “Dystopian” Pay-By-Palm Biometric Payment Option

Whole Foods Market is shutting down its palm-scan payment system nationwide, removing the devices from more than 500 stores by June 3 after shoppers largely ignored them. The chain, owned by Amazon, had pitched the feature as a frictionless way to pay. Instead, it became an experiment few customers embraced, according to The Daily Mail.

The program, called Amazon One, allowed shoppers to link their Amazon accounts to a scan of their palm and check out with a wave of the hand. Amazon says it processes more than a million biometric authentications each month across locations where the service operates, but a spokesperson said weak adoption at Whole Foods drove the decision to discontinue it there.

In interviews at a Union Square store in Manhattan, none of the dozen customers surveyed had used the scanners. Several said they had never seen anyone else try. “I haven’t [used palm payment], and I haven’t seen anyone use it before,” said Priscilla Flete. After learning how the system worked, she added, “It’s a bit invasive.”

The Daily Mail writes that privacy worries were a common refrain. “I don’t want to give my biometric data to nobody,” said Santiago Tieguec, who questioned the need for the service given that “Nowadays we have our cards in our phones.” Nusrat Abdullah, who hadn’t heard of the feature before, said, “It might be convenient, but I think your information is sensitive… I don’t think paying with your hands is very safe.”

Others expressed outright distrust. Gavin McGinn said, “I wouldn’t trust them to have that kind of information about people, because who would they sell it to?” Brayden Stephenson, who once tested the scanner out of curiosity, was skeptical that data would truly disappear: “A lot of the time, ‘delete’ is just archive and sell off to somebody else.”

Amazon disputes those fears, saying biometric data is encrypted, stored securely in the cloud and not shared with third parties. The company added that once the rollout ends, all associated customer information—including palm data—will be permanently deleted.

Retail analysts say the technology’s retreat underscores a basic reality: contactless cards and mobile wallets are already fast and easy. Without a clear benefit, many shoppers saw little reason to trade more personal data for the same checkout experience. As Stephenson put it, “I already have a card. I’m not getting anything out of that.”