Customers of popular US bakery chain Panera Bread will soon be able to buy their food and collect their loyalty points with the swipe of a hand. Literally.
New collaboration with @PaneraBread will let customers, for the first time, use their palm to access MyPanera rewards and pay. One of the many ways Amazon One, our palm recognition service, is helping to remove friction from the customer experience. https://t.co/9kdXctk2hQ
— Andy Jassy (@ajassy) March 22, 2023
The fast-casual restaurant just announced a partnership with Amazon’s biometric palm scanning service Amazon One. The tech giant will initially deploy its palm-reading technology at two Panera cafes in St. Louis before rolling out the service to additional restaurants in “the coming months”.
After linking their MyPanera accounts to Amazon One, customers will be able to pay for meals, get personalized recommendations and collect loyalty points. The process even allows for customers to be greeted by name by Panera staff.
Reportedly, linking MyPanera to their Amazon One account is optional. Customers can instead just use Amazon One for payments, not loyalty points.
Amazon One on the Expansion Path
The Panera partnership marks another step towards the mainstream for Amazon One’s palm scanning tech. The tech giant first introduced the technology in its Amazon Go stores in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, amid a wave of enthusiasm for contactless means of payment.
Amazon has since rolled out the tech to Whole Foods (which it owns) and a few sports arenas, including the T-Mobile Park. Assuming the partnership with Panera Bread proves successful, other stores and chains may be eager to jump on the Amazon One bandwagon to enhance customer experience.
Privacy Concerns
Amazon has claimed that its palm reading system is “more private” than alternative biometric systems that read faces or scan fingerprints.
But that has done little to assuage the privacy concerns expressed by some experts, who point out that this isn’t just a payments technology, it’s an invasive identity recognition technology.
Indeed, a lawsuit was filed against Amazon last week in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that its Amazon Go stores failed to appropriately notify customers that they were being monitored in their stores using “biometric identifiers”, as is required by New York City law.
Related Articles
- Amazon 2023 Layoffs: Tech in Distress despite Booming Job Market
- Amazon Pauses Virginia HQ2 Construction amid Tech Slowdown
- Amazon Digital Marketplace for NFTs Launches April 24 And They Will be Tied to Physical Assets
AiDoge (AI) - Meme Generation Platform
- Create & Share AI-Generated Memes
- Newest Meme Coin in the AI Crypto Sector
- Presale Live Now - aidoge.com
- Token-Based Credit System
- Stake $AI Tokens to Earn Daily Rewards
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Joel Frank.
Learn how to publish your content on B2C
Join our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage
Add B2C to your Google News Feed
