Retail Self-Checkouts Increasingly Popular in Stores

Self-checkout operations are somewhere between dubiously welcome and dubiously unwelcome in retail stores these days. There’s a certain convenience to these that’s hard to beat, and easy access to mobile payments that you don’t get from the real person cashier. Meanwhile, that real person cashier likely knows that if these things take off in any quantity, there’s literally no sense in keeping the real person cashier around. So it’s a point of conflict, but self-checkout is on the rise in a big way.

Some places are taking to this development more than others, but the overall trend is up, and how. The RBR Research report “Global EPOS and Self-Checkout 2017” noted self-checkout systems were up 67 percent worldwide. The top 10 retailers in the United States, meanwhile, saw an increase in shipments of 155 percent. Brazil and China were said to also be avid adopters, though South Africa is actively resisting thanks to the potential for massive joblessness.

Further differences can be seen worldwide in implementation. The British, for example, are using a very compact version that will only allow a payment card to be used. The Japanese are incorporating people in the concept, meaning fewer if any jobs lost. With further increases projected—RBR Research believes that the total amount of self-checkout systems in play by 2022 will measure around 400,000 total—this is a point that’s not going away.

With brick-and-mortar frantically looking for ways to compete with online and remain relevant, cutting expenses looks like the way to go. Cashiers are a fairly big expense, and that recovery on the bottom line seems valuable. Yet it’s easy to see the problems here; cashier is one of the biggest first jobs around; where will the youth of tomorrow get its resume fodder without that first retail job? What happens to large portions of the economy when those youth suddenly don’t have jobs and no disposable income?

Saving money and being competitive is important in any business environment, but we’re losing sight of the forest for the trees. While self-checkout isn’t going away, we need to keep the wider picture of the economy in mind lest our push toward convenience, mobility and technological advancement end up cutting our own economic throats in the end.