The Seattle-based e-tailing giant is offering customers an incentive to sign up for a program called Amazon One, through which users can pay for goods at the company's stores by scanning their palm print instead of using physical credit cards.
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The Post first reported on Amazon's palm payment initiative in 2019, and the company began rolling out the feature to Seattle stores last September.
Now, the seemingly convenient service is available at six Amazon stores in New York and 47 other Amazon stores across the country, according to the Amazon One website
Users who sign up and link their palms to their credit cards will receive a $10 store credit.
Amazon spokeswoman Jessica Martin declined to comment on the promotion.
According to Amazon's website, the feature "uses the information embedded in your palm to create a unique palm signature that can be read every time you use it."
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Since customers' palms are linked to their Amazon accounts, the company can use the data it collects for targeted advertising and shopping recommendations. Amazon will only delete customers' "palm signatures" if users close their accounts or don't use the feature for two years, the company said.
“Your palm is a personal part of you, and you decide when to put it on display and when to keep it private,” the Amazon One website writes.
The company had previously been criticized by civil liberties activists for selling controversial facial recognition software to police. Amazon suspended the use of facial recognition software by police during the protests over George Floyd last year.
Some activists have raised similar privacy and civil liberties concerns about the company's push for its new payment tactic.
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“Biometric data is one of the only ways that companies and governments can permanently track us,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told TechCrunch, which first reported the story. “You can change your name, you can change your Social Security number, but you can’t change your palm print.”
"It's scary that Amazon is asking people to sell their bodies, but it's even worse that people are doing it for such a low price," Cahn added.
