Kumar pointed to Amazon Web Services, the company’s $40 billion division that leases computing power, data storage, and myriad software capabilities to internet companies big and small, as an example of an Amazon offering that attracts competitors.Īmazon will collect data on where Amazon One customers shop when they use the payment option, but it will not know what shoppers purchase or how much they spend inside third-party retail stores. One obvious question is whether retailers, many of which consider Amazon a competitor of one sort or another, will want to do business with the tech giant. So it’s building out a futuristic suite of services to court other retailers, while showcasing the technology in its own stores as case studies.
#Photo scanner amazon license#
The company said in a blog post on Wednesday that it was in discussions with other retailers, but did not yet have any partnerships to announce.Īmazon’s plan to license these two homegrown technologies to other retailers, whether competitor or not, is the real story: Amazon isn’t satisfied with e-commerce dominance it wants to earn a cut of more transactions in the physical retail world, where 80-something percent of commerce still takes place in the US.
Kumar said the Amazon One pitch to other retailers is straightforward: reduce friction for your customers at checkout, thereby shortening lines and increasing how many shoppers are served along the way. In September, Amazon executive Dilip Kumar told Recode that the company expects to sell the technology to other retailers, like it began doing earlier this year with its “Just Walk Out” technology - the cocktail of cameras, sensors, and computer vision software that powers Amazon Go stores. Recode first reported in December 2019 that Amazon had filed a patent application for such a hand-payment technology. The company had added the tech to a total of 12 stores in the Seattle area before today’s Whole Foods announcement. The hand-scanning tech isn’t just for Amazon’s own stores - the company hopes to sell it to other retailers, including competitors.Īmazon first introduced the technology in September at some of the company’s Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores in Seattle. The first time they register to use this tech, a customer will scan their palm and insert their payment card at a terminal after that, they can simply pay with their hand. Seven more Whole Foods locations in the Seattle area will offer the payment option in the coming months. The new technology is now available at the grocery chain’s Madison Broadway store in Seattle, Washington. Now, the online retail giant is making a play to grab a piece of brick-and-mortar shopping, too - and it wants customers to literally lend a hand to do it.Īmazon on Wednesday is unveiling a new way to pay at select Whole Foods stores: a biometric technology called Amazon One that allows shoppers to pay by placing their palm over a scanning device when they check out.
Amazon accounts for nearly 40 percent of e-commerce sales in the US today, and it takes a cut of even more online shopping by selling payments services and other technologies to external shopping sites.
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