Is The No Cash Supermarket The Future of Retail?

No supermarket check-out. No cash exchanged. Just place those apples in your cart and let technology do the rest.

Two prototype supermarkets are now operating in the United States, run completely by robotic tools and the most sophisticated technology yet seen in a supermarket.

At the entrance to the supermarket, you are asked if you would like to sign in with the palms of your hands or a QR code.  These are then instantly linked to the shopper’s Amazon account.

As you shop, placing eggs, cereal, or anything at all, into your shopping cart, cameras and sensors record your every move.  Anything taken off the shelf by the customer is automatically added to a virtual cart, anything put back comes out of the virtual cart. 

At the end of the trip, all you have to do is simply walk out, waving a palm or QR code, over the exit turnstile and the bill later appears on your Amazon account.

No cash supermarket

The system is called Just Walk Out and uses similar technology to driverless cars. Amazon teamed up with the supermarket chain Whole Foods for this experiment, and the first supermarkets – one in Washington DC and another in Los Angeles – are reporting that some customers are enjoying the ease and convenience, others don’t appreciate the scrutiny of all the cameras, and the lack of the personal touch at the check-out line.

“We’ve always noticed that customers didn’t like standing in check-out lines,” explains Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology. “It’s not the most productive use of their time, which is how we came up with the idea to build Just Walk Out.”

Amazon’s Just Walk Out Technology is being offered currently to other global retailers.  Stand by to see more soon.