Amazon One
Amazon One is a contactless, palm-based biometric authentication system developed by Amazon Web Services that allows users to verify their identity for payments, access control, and loyalty programs by hovering their palm over a scanner device.[1] Launched on September 29, 2020, the technology employs computer vision, infrared light, and machine learning algorithms to capture and analyze unique palm features, including surface patterns and subsurface vein structures, generating a secure mathematical signature rather than storing images.[2][3] Initially deployed in Amazon Go convenience stores in Seattle, it has expanded to enable seamless transactions without cards or phones, linking users' palms to payment methods and profiles upon enrollment at terminals or via a dedicated mobile app introduced in March 2024.[4] The system prioritizes user control, with biometric data encrypted and stored only on AWS servers under user consent, allowing deletion of signatures at any time through the Amazon One app or support channels.[5] By the end of 2023, Amazon One was integrated into all over 500 Whole Foods Market stores across the United States, facilitating checkout, Prime member discounts, and entry verification, marking a significant scale-up from pilot locations.[6] Beyond retail, Amazon One Enterprise variant supports workplace badging, venue access, and healthcare applications, leveraging AI for high-accuracy identification in high-traffic environments while addressing scalability through modular device installations.[7] Adoption reflects growing interest in frictionless biometrics, though it has prompted discussions on data security given the immutable nature of physiological traits, with Amazon emphasizing opt-in mechanics and non-mandatory use to mitigate concerns.[5]History
Development and Initial Launch
Amazon One was developed internally by Amazon's physical retail team as a contactless biometric system leveraging palm recognition to streamline payments, access control, and other everyday activities. The technology integrates custom-built hardware, computer vision, and proprietary algorithms to capture and analyze unique palm vein patterns and surface features, emphasizing frictionless user experiences over traditional methods like cards or keys. Development efforts drew on Amazon's prior investments in computer vision and biometrics, with the company filing a patent application for palm recognition technology in late 2019, indicating research spanning several years prior to public unveiling.[8][2] The system was publicly announced on September 29, 2020, positioned as an optional enhancement for Amazon Go convenience stores to enable palm-based entry and transactions without physical contact. Initial enrollment required users to position their hand above a wall-mounted device, linking the palm signature to payment methods or IDs via computer vision that generates a secure mathematical representation rather than storing images. This launch aligned with heightened demand for touchless solutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, though Amazon emphasized the technology's origins predated the crisis, rooted in long-term goals for seamless retail interactions.[2][9] Deployment began immediately on the announcement date at two Seattle locations: the Amazon Go store at 7th and Blanchard and another at 300 Boren Avenue North in South Lake Union. Users could enroll on-site for free, with the system supporting payments, loyalty program access, and store entry, all processed in under a second using the palm's distinct vascular and frictional ridge patterns for high accuracy and spoof resistance. Early adoption focused on voluntary opt-in, with Amazon reporting no mandatory use and options for data deletion, as part of broader testing to validate scalability in controlled retail environments.[2][10]Post-Launch Expansions and Updates
In February 2021, Amazon expanded Amazon One deployment beyond initial Seattle locations to additional Amazon Go convenience stores and other Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods sites across multiple U.S. cities, including New York and Chicago.[11] By April 2021, the system was introduced at select Whole Foods Market stores in the Seattle metropolitan area, allowing customers to link palms for payments and age verification.[12] In August 2022, Amazon One reached 65 Whole Foods locations throughout California, focusing on high-traffic urban markets to test broader consumer adoption.[13] A major retail expansion occurred in July 2023, when Amazon announced rollout to all more than 500 U.S. Whole Foods stores by year-end, enabling palm-based payments at checkout alongside traditional methods.[14][15] Beyond grocery retail, Amazon One entered sports venues in October 2022 with installation of 18 devices at Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena, primarily for concessions during Seattle Kraken NHL games and Seattle Storm WNBA events.[16] In November 2023, Amazon Web Services integrated Amazon One into its enterprise offerings, allowing third-party businesses to deploy palm-scanning for secure physical access control, such as office buildings and facilities, without requiring AWS-specific infrastructure for core recognition.[17] A software update in March 2024 introduced the Amazon One Palm Payment App, enabling users to register palms via mobile devices for contactless payments at supported merchants, leveraging vein pattern analysis for enhanced security over surface prints.[18] By March 2025, Amazon One saw its largest third-party deployment at New York University Langone Health facilities, where palm scans expedite patient check-ins and reduce wait times by integrating with electronic health records, marking a shift toward healthcare applications.[19][20]Technical Details
Biometric Recognition Mechanism
Amazon One employs a palm-based biometric system that captures both surface and subsurface features of the user's palm to generate a unique numerical signature for identity verification. The device uses specialized optical hardware to image the palm's creases, friction ridges, and underlying vein patterns, employing non-visible light spectra, such as infrared, to penetrate the skin and map vascular structures without physical contact. This dual-imaging approach—combining visible palm morphology with subcutaneous vein data—enhances distinctiveness, as vein patterns remain stable throughout life and are harder to replicate than surface prints alone.[21][1] During operation, users intentionally hover their palm approximately 4-8 inches above the scanner, triggering proprietary computer vision algorithms to process the captured images in real-time. These algorithms extract feature vectors representing the palm's geometry and vascular map, converting them into an encrypted biometric template stored securely in AWS cloud infrastructure. Authentication involves a one-to-many comparison against enrolled templates, with matching completed in under one second; the system includes liveness detection mechanisms to differentiate live tissue from spoofs, such as 3D-printed or silicone replicas, having rejected over 1,000 such attempts in testing. Neural networks, trained on millions of synthetic palm images generated via generative adversarial networks (GANs), enable robust performance across variations in lighting, pose, and minor injuries like scars or Band-Aids.[21][22] The system's accuracy stems from this AI-augmented training regimen, achieving a false acceptance rate approaching zero after millions of authentications across hundreds of thousands of enrolled palms, reportedly 100 times superior to dual-iris scanning in reliability. Palm signatures are not raw images but abstracted mathematical representations, ensuring that even if data is compromised, it cannot reconstruct the original biometric. All processing occurs in a dedicated, tamper-evident AWS secure zone, with no local storage on devices to minimize breach risks.[21][22][1]Data Security and Privacy Architecture
Amazon One employs a cloud-based architecture leveraging AWS infrastructure for biometric data handling, where palm and vein images captured by the device are immediately encrypted upon scanning and transmitted to a dedicated secure zone in the AWS Cloud, with no data stored locally on the Amazon One hardware.[5] This design ensures that raw biometric images are processed transiently and not retained, minimizing exposure risks at the edge. The system utilizes multilayered security controls, including hardware-level protections against spoofing—such as liveness detection that has rejected over 1,000 tested replicas—and software isolation to prevent unauthorized access during transmission via TLS 1.2 or higher.[21][23] Upon receipt in the AWS Cloud, the encrypted images are converted into a unique palm signature—a proprietary numerical vector derived from the palm's shape, lines, and vein patterns—after which the original images are discarded, leaving only this abstracted, non-reversible template for future matching.[5][21] The palm signature is then stored encrypted at rest using AWS-managed keys, with access restricted through identity and access management (IAM) policies, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and activity logging via AWS CloudTrail to audit API calls and user actions.[23] This template-based approach renders the data unusable for reconstructing identifiable images, enhancing resistance to breaches while supporting high-accuracy authentication without false positives observed in millions of interactions.[21] Privacy protections emphasize user agency and data minimization: enrollment requires explicit consent via the Amazon One mobile app or in-person opt-in, and users can instantly delete their palm signatures and linked payment or access data at any time through the app, with no retention of deleted information.[5] Biometric templates are not shared with third parties, advertisers, or government entities except as legally compelled, and are isolated from external datasets due to the proprietary encoding, preventing linkage for surveillance or marketing purposes.[21] The architecture avoids storing payment details alongside biometrics, instead associating signatures with tokenized identifiers for transactions. Compliance is integrated via AWS's shared responsibility model, where Amazon handles infrastructure security—including FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography and GDPR-aligned data protection—while deployers manage user consents for biometric collection under applicable laws like state privacy statutes classifying palm data as identifiers.[23][24] Regular auditing and certification enable deployment in regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare, though critics note potential vulnerabilities in cloud-centralized biometrics despite encryption, as no system is immune to advanced state-level threats.[5][25]Features and Functionality
Enrollment and Usage Process
Enrollment in Amazon One begins with users downloading the dedicated mobile application available for iOS and Android devices.[26] Within the app, individuals create an account linked to their existing Amazon credentials, capture images of one or both palms using the device's camera, and associate payment methods or other identifiers such as loyalty cards.[4] This app-based process, introduced on March 27, 2024, enables enrollment remotely without requiring an initial in-person visit, typically completing in under a minute as the system generates a unique, encrypted palm signature from the captured vein patterns and surface features.[4] Alternatively, users can enroll directly at participating Amazon One devices in retail locations by hovering their palm over a specialized scanner, which prompts linkage to payment or access credentials on-site.[27] For enterprise applications, enrollment often involves supervised stations where palms are scanned and tied to organizational IDs, ensuring secure integration with workplace access systems.[28] Once enrolled, usage of Amazon One is streamlined for contactless interactions. Users simply position their enrolled palm above the Amazon One reader device, positioned at checkout lanes, entry points, or access gates, without needing physical cards, phones, or additional authentication.[3] The device employs near-infrared imaging to capture the palm's biometric traits, including vein structure, which are processed via computer vision algorithms to match against the encrypted signature stored securely in the cloud; this verification occurs in seconds, authorizing payments, age verification, loyalty program access, or physical entry as applicable.[1] Successful matches trigger seamless transactions, with funds debited from linked payment methods or access granted without further user input, supporting applications in retail payments at stores like Whole Foods and Amazon Go, as well as non-retail uses such as stadium entry or employee badging.[1] The process maintains hygiene through non-contact scanning and does not store raw images, relying instead on mathematical representations of biometric data to mitigate privacy risks.[27]Applications in Payments and Access
Amazon One enables contactless payments by associating a user's palm signature with a linked payment method, such as a credit card, during enrollment via the Amazon One app or device.[1] At checkout terminals in supported retail environments, users hover their palm over the scanner, which authenticates the biometric data against the registered profile to process transactions securely without physical cards or mobile devices.[3] This application has been deployed in over 500 Whole Foods Market stores across the U.S. since July 19, 2023, allowing customers to complete purchases and apply loyalty discounts automatically.[6] Beyond retail payments, the system supports access control by verifying palm biometrics against enterprise databases for physical entry points, eliminating the need for badges, keys, or PINs.[29] In corporate settings, employees can use Amazon One Enterprise to authenticate entry into offices or restricted areas, with initial rollout announced on November 28, 2023, enhancing security through AWS-encrypted palm data.[7] For venues like stadiums or events, users link their palm to tickets or credentials, enabling seamless entry by simply scanning the hand.[3] The technology also facilitates hybrid applications, such as appointment check-ins in healthcare facilities, where Amazon One was first implemented at NYU Langone Health on March 4, 2025, for patient verification and access to services.[30] Additionally, it integrates with loyalty programs, allowing palm scans to redeem rewards or present digital cards during payments or access scenarios.[31] These uses prioritize frictionless authentication while maintaining data isolation, as palm images are neither stored nor shared, converted instead to encrypted templates.[5]Adoption and Deployment
Rollout in Retail Environments
Amazon One debuted in retail settings on September 29, 2020, at two Amazon Go convenience stores in Seattle, Washington, where it served as a contactless entry and payment option.[2] This initial pilot integrated the palm-scanning technology with Amazon Go's Just Walk Out system, allowing enrolled users to enter by hovering their hand over the reader and complete purchases without traditional checkout.[2] Expansion within Amazon's retail footprint accelerated in 2021. On February 1, 2021, Amazon One became available at two additional Amazon Go locations in Seattle (5th & Marion and Terry & Stewart), increasing the total to four stores.[11] The system then entered Whole Foods Market stores on April 21, 2021, starting with the flagship location at 1001 Summit Ave E in Seattle, enabling palm-based payments linked to Amazon accounts or credit cards.[32] Subsequent rollouts targeted broader geographic coverage in Amazon-owned grocery and convenience formats. By August 9, 2022, Amazon One was deployed to select Whole Foods stores in California, including those in Malibu, Santa Monica, and Montana Avenue in Los Angeles, with plans for further installations in the state.[33] Amazon announced on July 19, 2023, that the technology would reach all more than 500 Whole Foods Market locations across the United States by the end of 2023, facilitating payments and access to Prime member benefits such as discounts.[6] As of September 2025, Amazon One remains operational in these environments, with primary availability in the full network of over 500 U.S. Whole Foods stores and a reduced footprint of approximately 16 Amazon Go locations nationwide, reflecting Amazon's pivot from widespread Go store expansion to licensing Just Walk Out technology to third parties.[34][35] The rollout emphasized seamless integration with existing payment terminals and enrollment kiosks at store entrances, though adoption rates vary by location based on customer enrollment and usage data reported by Amazon.[6]Expansion to Non-Retail Sectors
Amazon One has been deployed in sports venues for contactless access and payments, enabling fans to enter events, access VIP areas, and purchase concessions by scanning their palm after enrollment. For instance, at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners, Amazon One integrates with Just Walk Out technology in concession markets, facilitating quicker transactions reported to be three to four times higher than in traditional stores.[36] This application, highlighted in deployments since at least November 2022, extends to other arenas where it links to membership rewards for discounts and benefits.[36] In airports and travel hubs, Amazon One supports streamlined identity verification for entry points and payments, reducing friction in high-traffic environments. Deployments emphasize contactless authentication at gates and retail areas, with examples including authentication for seamless experiences in terminals.[37] Such uses, promoted since September 2023, leverage the system's sub-second processing to handle distributed locations efficiently.[1] The launch of Amazon One Enterprise on November 27, 2023, marked expansion into corporate and enterprise settings for physical access control, allowing employees to authenticate via palm scans for offices, data centers, and sensitive areas instead of badges or keys.[38] This service enhances security by tying biometric data to enterprise systems, with applications in office buildings and campuses where it supports onboarding and multi-factor access without sharing data externally.[39] Over 9,900 devices were operational by mid-2025, processing more than one million authentications monthly across such non-retail sites.[1] In healthcare, Amazon One entered the sector with a March 3, 2025, rollout at NYU Langone Health facilities, where patients use palm scans for appointment check-ins, bypassing traditional identification methods.[19] This represents the technology's first major healthcare deployment, aimed at reducing wait times in sensitive environments while maintaining privacy through encrypted, non-shared palm data stored in AWS.[40]Reception and Impact
Achievements and Empirical Benefits
Amazon One has achieved notable reliability in biometric authentication, with the system recording over 3 million uses by mid-2023 at an accuracy rate of 99.9999%, as reported by Amazon and corroborated in independent analyses.[22][41] This performance stems from its dual imaging of palm surface features and subcutaneous vein patterns, which Amazon claims surpasses iris scanning by a factor of 100 in accuracy, reducing false positives and enhancing verification speed.[21][42] Empirical benefits include expedited transaction processing, enabling contactless payments without physical cards or devices, which minimizes checkout friction for customers and supports higher throughput in high-volume retail settings.[43] Retailers benefit from streamlined operations, as the technology facilitates personalized interactions—such as loyalty program access or age verification—while maintaining data security through encrypted, non-stored biometric templates in AWS cloud infrastructure.[1] Customer acceptance has shown incremental growth, with surveys indicating 10% of U.S. respondents "very comfortable" with palm-based payments in 2023, up from 7% in 2019, reflecting practical usability in environments like stadiums and offices where traditional methods prove cumbersome.[44] These outcomes demonstrate causal advantages in efficiency over manual verification, though long-term adoption metrics remain limited to self-reported enterprise deployments.Criticisms, Controversies, and Counterarguments
Privacy advocates and U.S. senators have criticized Amazon One for potential misuse of biometric data, arguing that the system enables Amazon to link palm scans to consumer profiles for targeted advertising and behavioral tracking without explicit consent. In August 2021, Senators Bob Menendez, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders sent a letter to Amazon executives expressing concerns over how the technology could expand surveillance capabilities and exacerbate the company's data monopoly, potentially violating consumer protections under existing laws.[45] Privacy experts, including those cited in media reports, have labeled the palm-scanning enrollment process a "terrible idea" due to the irreversible nature of biometric identifiers, which cannot be altered like passwords if compromised, raising fears of perpetual data retention by a corporation with a history of expansive data practices.[46] Security risks associated with Amazon One center on the vulnerability of centralized biometric databases to breaches, as palm vein patterns, once stolen, offer no recourse for users unlike replaceable credentials such as credit cards. Analysts have noted that while Amazon converts palm images into encrypted mathematical models stored in AWS cloud infrastructure with limited employee access, a successful hack could expose these templates to identity theft or spoofing attempts, amplified by Amazon's past lapses in data handling unrelated to One.[47][48][49] No verified breaches of Amazon One data have occurred as of October 2025, but critics contend that the technology's subsurface vein mapping, intended to resist surface-level forgery, still relies on Amazon's unproven long-term safeguards amid broader scrutiny of the firm's cybersecurity record.[50] Concerns over accuracy and demographic biases in Amazon One remain unsubstantiated by empirical studies specific to palm vein recognition, unlike facial systems where error rates disproportionately affect certain racial groups due to training data imbalances. Palm-based biometrics, focusing on internal vascular patterns rather than skin tone or features, theoretically mitigate such surface-level disparities, with Amazon claiming high precision through AI-driven liveness detection that distinguishes real palms from replicas in testing.[47] However, skeptics argue that without independent audits or diverse dataset validations, latent biases could emerge in real-world deployments, echoing issues in Amazon's other AI tools. Counterarguments from Amazon emphasize the system's superior security over traditional methods, asserting that palm signatures are harder to intercept or replicate than PINs or cards, reducing fraud risks in high-traffic environments like Whole Foods stores where One has been piloted since 2020.[47] The company maintains that data is not shared across services without user opt-in and undergoes encryption protocols compliant with industry standards, positioning One as a voluntary convenience tool rather than mandatory surveillance.[51] Proponents, including security analysts, highlight the absence of reported failures or exploits in over four years of operation, suggesting that privacy fears are often overstated relative to tangible benefits like contactless access during the COVID-19 era, though these defenses do not fully address the non-revocable essence of biometrics. No dedicated lawsuits or regulatory actions targeting Amazon One have materialized, indicating limited empirical grounds for the more alarmist critiques despite ongoing general antitrust and privacy probes into Amazon's ecosystem.[52]Comparisons and Alternatives
Versus Other Biometric Systems
Amazon One, which employs contactless palm recognition combining surface vein patterns and shape via infrared imaging, differs from other biometric systems in its emphasis on internal vascular features, which are stable throughout life and resistant to superficial alterations. Unlike fingerprint scanning, which relies on external ridge patterns susceptible to wear, cuts, dirt, or environmental factors, palm scanning captures a larger biometric template with multiple data points, including vein geometry not visible to the naked eye, yielding higher accuracy rates—Amazon reports false match rates below 1 in 1 million, compared to fingerprints' vulnerability to spoofing via gelatin replicas or latent prints.[21][53] This internal focus enhances security against forgery attempts that succeed more readily with fingerprints, as demonstrated in forensic studies where fingerprint systems exhibit false acceptance rates up to 1-2% under adversarial conditions.[54] In contrast to facial recognition, which analyzes external features prone to variations from lighting, aging, masks, or photographic spoofs, Amazon One's liveness detection verifies blood flow and tissue depth, reducing replay attacks that plague facial systems—industry tests show facial biometrics can be fooled by high-resolution images or 3D masks in over 20% of cases without advanced countermeasures.[55][56] Palm systems also avoid the demographic biases observed in facial algorithms, where error rates for certain ethnic groups exceed 10% due to training data imbalances, as palm vein patterns remain consistent across demographics without relying on skin tone or facial geometry.[42] However, facial recognition offers greater standoff distance for scanning, potentially suiting high-throughput environments better than palm's requirement for a deliberate hand placement, though Amazon One processes in under 1 second once enrolled.[57] Compared to iris scanning, which achieves high precision through pupillary details but demands precise eye alignment and close-range optics, Amazon One integrates both palm surface and subsurface data for what Amazon describes as 100 times greater accuracy than dual-iris verification, leveraging the palm's expansive vein network for richer entropy without the hygiene issues of ocular contact or squinting discomfort.[21] Iris systems, while spoof-resistant via texture analysis, suffer higher false non-match rates in uncontrolled lighting or with contact lenses, whereas palm vein imaging operates robustly in varied ambient conditions due to infrared penetration.[42] Deployment costs for iris hardware remain elevated due to specialized cameras, contrasting Amazon One's integration into wall-mounted units for retail scalability.[54]| Biometric System | Key Strengths vs. Amazon One | Key Weaknesses vs. Amazon One | Reported Accuracy Metrics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fingerprint | Lower hardware cost; widespread device integration | Higher spoofability; affected by physical damage or residue; smaller template area | False acceptance ~0.1-1% in lab tests; vulnerable to replicas[53][58] |
| Facial Recognition | Non-contact at distance; rapid group scanning potential | External features easily altered or spoofed; bias in diverse populations | False match rates 0.3-5% varying by conditions; spoof success >20% without liveness[56][59] |
| Iris Scanning | Internal pattern stability; low false positives in controlled settings | Requires eye proximity and fixation; sensitive to occlusion or dilation | Equal error rates ~0.01-0.1%; but lower throughput than palm's multi-feature capture[21] |