30 Sep Cashier-less Checkout -The next-generation retail trend

Cashier-less technology- The ongoing trend in retail technology, is one of the most talked about technology advances in the retail sector. Customers demand a fast, safe, and convenient checkout option in today’s fast-moving lifestyle. They just don’t want to stand in long queues for checking out. Let’s check how the cashier-less checkout system can make benefit a retail store’s total revenue and how it can improve customer satisfaction.

The benefit of the Cashier-less system in Retail Stores

The retail sector has undergone many changes in the past few years. Many advancements and reconstructions happened to improve the customer experience like e-commerce, Point of sale systems, mobile wallets, smartwatch payments, credit cards, loyalty programs, coupons, barcodes, QR Codes, etc. The cashier-less system is first introduced by the eCommerce Giant Amazon.

“Amazon Go” is a smart store with a grab-and-go. The stores are cashier-less and partially automated from which the customers can select the items and just checkout by themselves without going to the cashier or salesperson. The first “Amazon go” store was opened in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington in 2020.

The cashier-less checkout promises a flexible shopper journey and the outcome will be newly generated loyal customers. This contactless checkout option is going to restructure the retail sector. Big stores normally will have a crowd at the checkout section. In today’s busy world nobody wants to wait for a long time in the queue. Sometimes

customers will abandon the items at the checkout point only because of the long queue. In such cases, customers can use self-checkout kiosks or mobile apps for checkout. In the current retail tech landscape, cashier-less checkout is surely marked as a customer-friendly trend.

Security is one of the main concerns that retailers took forward about the cashier-less system. There are a lot of ways to track and prevent shoplifting in brick-and-mortar stores. But a small percentage of theft is still happening even if sales persons and cashiers are there. Cashier-less kiosks are designed with machine learning and AI, and the stores will be under surveillance camera monitoring. So there are no loopholes for the intruders to steal something from the store. In Amazon Go, amazon used a combination of hardware and vision software to track the item. Current machine learning algorithms are capable to identify the buyer and allocate the selected item to him. Other solutions like RFID tags, QR Codes, etc. can be used.

Cashier-less checkout enables the customers to exit the store without wasting time for checkout and retailers can allocate this staff for any other tasks. User inexperience may be one of the prime challenges retailers have to face while implementing the system in the store. So at least for a shorter period human assistance is necessary for the support of customers.

One of the biggest retail Giants in UAE, Carrefour, opened its new cashier-less grocery store “Carrefour City + ” in Mall Of The Emirates , UAE.  It is the first cashier less store in Middle East. Customers have to download the Carrefour app to enter the store and hundreds of surveillance cameras are watching the movements of the customers. The shelf sensors and the cameras will track the items in the baskets. The shoppers will receive a receipt 5 minutes after they leave the store. Retailers will get detailed data about the shopping behavior of their loyal customers. These analytics can be used to provide a better shopping experience.

By 2030, we will see many Cashier-less stores in Middle East. Let’s get ready to experience the technological advances in Retail.