Your one-of-a-kind palm print is worth $10 in store credit, according to Amazon.
The Seattle-based e-tailing giant is offering customers the incentive to enroll in a program called Amazon One, through which users can pay for goods at its stores by scanning their palm prints instead of using physical credit cards.
The Post first broke news of Amazon’s palm payment initiative in 2019, and the company started rolling out the feature in Seattle stores last September.
Now, the creepily convenient service is available at six Amazon stores in New York City and 47 other Amazon stores throughout the country, according to Amazon One’s website.
Users who sign up and link their palms to their credit cards will receive $10 in store credit.
Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin declined to comment on the promotion.
According to Amazon’s site, the feature “uses the information embedded in your palm to create a unique palm signature that it can read each and every time you use it.”
Users who sign up and link their palms to their credit cards will receive $10 in store credit. AmazonSince customers’ palms are linked to their Amazon accounts, the company may use the data it collects to target ads and shopping recommendations. Amazon will only delete customers’ “palm signatures” if users explicitly close their accounts or do not use the feature for two years, according to the company.
“Your palm is a personal part of you and you alone decide when to hover it, and when to keep it private,” reads the Amazon One website.
The company — which reported weaker-than-expected earnings in the second quarter — has previously caught flak from civil liberties activists for selling controversial facial recognition software to police. Amazon suspended police use of its facial recognition software during the George Floyd protests last year.
Since customers’ palms are linked to their Amazon accounts, the company may use the data it collects to target ads and shopping recommendations. AmazonSome activists have raised similar privacy and civil liberties concerns about the company’s palm signature push.
“Biometric data is one of the only ways that companies and governments can track us permanently,” Albert Fox Cahn, the 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 horrifying 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.
