Amazon will be offering a $10 store credit if consumers are ready to scan their palms. The e-commerce giant is offering customers the incentive to enroll in a program called Amazon One, which will enable users to pay for goods at its stores just by scanning their palm prints instead of using physical methods of payment.

The New York Post first reported about the tech in 2019, and Amazon started rolling out the new tech in Seattle stores in September 2020. Now, the service has been made available at six Amazon stores in New York City and 47 other Amazon stores across the country, as per the Amazon One website.

Palm will be linked to the account

Users who enroll in the service will receive $10 in store credits. The company site mentions that 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.”

Since the palms will be linked to the user’s Amazon account, the company might use the data to push targeted ads and shopping recommendations. Amazon will only remove customers’ “palm signatures” if they close their accounts or do not use the feature for two years, as per Amazon.

Tech drawing privacy concerns

 “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.

“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. “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,” he added.

Previously, Amazon also announced that it is testing new robots to ensure employee safety at its warehouses. Amazon has named these robots after Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie.