(ETH) – Amazon brick-and-mortar stores may have a hand in changing the way we check out after shopping by using biometrics. The online retailer rolled out biometric palm scanners at some stores last year and expanded the Amazon One program to grocery, book, and 4-star stores in Seattle in February.
According to FOX 30 News, Now the company is expanding the program once again to stores across the country. To get more people to scan their hands to pay, Amazon is offering a $10 promotional credit.
CBS News reports that Amazon touts the biometric payment system, currently available at 53 Amazon-owned stores, including some Whole Foods Markets, as a “new, contactless identity service that makes it easier for you to move through the world with just a simple palm scan.”
The program is designed to “unlock your world by giving you the freedom to pay, enter, and identify with nothing but your palm,” Amazon says on its website. But one privacy watchdog expressed concern about Amazon One and how the data the system collects could be used.
“It’s horrifying that people are being asked to sell their bodies in this way, but it’s even worse that people are doing it for such a cheap price,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told CBS MoneyWatch.
Cahn also noted that Amazon has previously sold facial recognition software to police departments. “I’m terrified that the biometric data used to check out of stores today will be used by ICE to deport undocumented people in the future,” he said.
