Amazon may be closing a number of its own high-tech physical retail stores in recent days, but some of the technology it developed for those stores is finding a new home. The online retailer announced today that Panera will now become the first restaurant to deploy Amazon’s palm reading payment and loyalty system known as Amazon One in its own stores, allowing its customers to both pay as well as access the chain’s loyalty program.
Currently, Panera has the Amazon One system deployed at two cafes in its hometown of St. Louis, but Amazon says the system will expand to other locations in the months ahead. Panera tells us this includes additional cafes in the St. Louis area and other Seattle markets to start. By year-end, it expects to have 10-20 locations live with the technology.
Leveraging computer vision technology, the Amazon O...
