By Chuck Martin
Self-checkout shopping similar to the cashierless action at Amazon Go stores may be catching on.
Standard Market in San Francisco uses overhead cameras to track product and shoppers, who are charged via the Standard checkout app after they leave the store and Amazon has several Amazon Go stores already in operation, with rumors of more coming.
They are not alone. Ricker’s is rolling out a hybrid version of mobile payment and Amazon Go at 58 of its convenience stores in Indiana. Ricker’s is using Skip, the maker of a mobile self-checkout app.
Now Skip has contracted for frictionless checkout at 3,000 locations, starting with 28 Jiffy Trip locations in Oklahoma and Rapid Refill convenience stores in New England, according to the company.
The Skip system integrates with point-of-sale systems of retailers and shoppers then use the Skip mobile app to scan and pay for groceries as they shop.
The technology is less the issue here than is consumer behavior, often the case with potentially game-changing technology.
The test will be to see how many shoppers migrate to Amazon Go stores and those with pay-and-go technologies such as Skip.
