Walmart Rolls Out Scan & Go Systems

Mobile payments have definitely caught on at the retail level, yet many of us have wondered why we’re still waiting in checkout lines. After all, surely our smartphones can scan barcodes just as easily as those big checkout stands do, and with a lot less waiting. The good news is that, at some Walmart locations, the change is being made thanks to the new Scan & Go app.

It’s been seen as an answer to Amazon’s push for self-checkout systems, though Amazon’s is a much smaller scale system given that Amazon’s physical presence is still light. Amazon rolled out its own self-checkout, Amazon Go, at one Seattle location available only to company employees. Walmart’s version will be on a much wider scale by comparison, available to over a dozen stores in six states: Texas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida and Arkansas.

Plus, for those who don’t have a smartphone yet, you won’t be left out on this one. No, you’ll have access to handheld scanners offered at the door, and there’s even some accommodation for those who don’t feel safe linking a payment mechanism to the Scan & Go app; users so inclined will be able to hit a self-checkout register instead where payment will be as easy as scanning a barcode.

There’s a lot of weight in those statements, and some hefty implications. First off, if Walmart’s doing it at a dozen locations so far, it’s not much to worry about. This may never get past the first dozen stores. But if it does, it could be something to watch, and something retailers will have to scramble to put in place just to keep up.

This is a great boon to user convenience; the notion that users could scan their own items, in store, and then pay for these all from the same platform is almost too good to be true. That will cut waits for everyone, even if they’re just using the scanners to scan their own items.

Of course, the immediate followup is “What happens to all of Walmart’s current cashiers?”, and the answer is likely “They’ll all be cashiered.” It’s hard to see a future in which this doesn’t lead to one of America’s biggest employers losing a lot of employees.