Mobile Payments Self-Checkout Future in the Hands of New mPOS Systems

It’s easy to see why a lot of people like the idea of mobile payments and self-checkout. Being able to serve as your own checkout stand means that you’re always the next person in line. That speeds things up and makes your overall customer experience better for the faster pace. However, access to such tools is as yet limited, but that’s a point a lot of retailers are looking to change thanks to significant improvements in mobile point of sale (mPOS) systems.

Already, we’ve seen several brands make this leap, like Nike and Loblaw, giving customers the ability to put their mobile devices to work in handling checkout duties. In fact, within the next three years, 63 percent of retailers plan to roll this concept out in their own stores, which likely means we’ll see this show up in more familiar and larger brands soon.

There’s a good reason for this ramped-up release schedule: sheer profit potential. The global POS software market is expected to hit $30.9 billion just by 2024, and with retailers rapidly planning to introduce the systems, the chances for repeat business and happy customers goes up with it. After all, word from Boston Retail Partners says that 56 percent of shoppers are more likely to shop with retailers that will let them share carts from one channel to another, like online to in-store. And in general, 73 percent of customers want access to self-service systems like self-checkout. Failing to provide at this point is like showing whole rafts of customers the door.

When customers so clearly want a service, retailers who don’t provide it only open up the opportunity floodgates for those who do. With so many retailers poised to offer self-checkout options in the next three years, it’s a safe bet that the rest of the holdouts won’t be far behind. They just can’t be, not if they hope to have any kind of competitive edge in the market. Perhaps the only real downside here is the potential job loss involved, but if companies maintain human checkout alongside self-checkout, they can maintain that competitive edge of faster checkout for all.

Only time will tell what impact widespread self-checkout has, but it’s certainly looking positive the farther in we go.