New reporting shows how mega-retailer Amazon may be poised to conquer yet another aspect of the new retail world.
For some time now, we’ve had different forms of automatic payment at point of sale, but Amazon’s new cashierless technology makes significant changes to how we shop that will probably have a dramatic impact on what retail looks like in the near future.
A technology called Amazon Just Walk Out rearranges steps of the traditional credit or debit card shopping process.
The shopper inserts the card on the way into the store, and the objects that he or she selects are tracked, so that the card can be automatically billed when the customer leaves. There’s no standing in line – the transaction process is seamless in a very important way.
“Items picked up by a customer and any guests who enter with them will be added to the shopper’s virtual cart,” writes Jeffrey Dastin for Reuters in San Francisco. “The store will then bill the credit card once the person or group leaves the store — no bar code scans or checkout lines necessary.”
Think about the hundreds and hundreds of years that humans have queued in line to buy things. All of that was predicated on the need for human-to-human transactions and “verified trust” in terms of counting out money, or more recently, approving cards. It’s likely that in the years to come we will just go around grabbing things, and the charges will show up in our online banking account.
By instituting this type of last-mile retail change, Amazon builds on its history of dominant e-commerce activity. But Just Walk Out is different – it’s something that revolutionizes the bricks and mortar approach to make it more appealing. If someone doesn’t have ten minutes to stand in line(or just doesn’t want to!), they can still duck into the shop and buy.
It’s no new that it feels, to some, a little strange.
“There is something slightly unnerving about leaving a store without so much as scanning an item,” wrote Hallie Golden at The Guardian in February, noting that Amazon in some cases placed signs to encourage shoppers to “just walk out” at the end.
If that wasn’t enough, Amazon is also looking to sell this technology to other retailers. Keep an eye on this trend if you have investment in retail-related equities.