Following on from the thread about the "Invisible Credit Card of the Future" Amazon are moving towards another type of shopping experience.... ON MONDAY, AMAZON took the wraps off Amazon Go, a real-world grocery store that comes with a twist: there’s no checkout process. You just grab the stuff you want and walk out; the order posts to your Amazon account afterwards. There are no cashiers, no lines, no fumbling for a credit card. And while experts agree that Go looks very much like the future of retail, it’s less clear whether Amazon has all of the pieces in place. There’s one Amazon Go location so far, in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, and it’s a relatively conservative amount of space: 1800 square feet holding perishable grocery goods like bread, milk, and cheese, as well as pre-made snacks and fresh meals. Amazon says all you need is the Amazon Go app to enter the store and start shopping. Or rather, that’s what you will need when Amazon decides to open the store up to civilians. Currently, Amazon Go is available only to Amazon employees in beta, with the public launch date set for early 2017.
I am sure that once they have tested this they will be opening up the store, or at least a similar version of it in other places, or maybe making the Amazon GO app work at other stores. We have another thread about this, so @Ken Anderson will probably merge the two threads when he notices there are two of them. This idea of buying through an app seems to be the up and coming thing, and other stores are already trying out similar versions. Sam's Club has an app that you can scan in the barcode as you shop, and I think that you pay for the purchases online and by using the app, you do not have to stand in line to check out. Just like most stores now have the self-checkout lanes, I think that more stores will be coming out with scanning apps for people to shop and scan and then just pay with their Apple Pay, or whatever payment method they choose to use. I don't know that I like this very much either; but I do believe that this is the future of shopping, whether we like it or not, @Terry Page .
I also have the problems that Ken described. I sometimes use the self-checkout if the others have long lines and I'm in a rush, but I prefer to go to an actual cashier, and I don't see a discount in using the self-checkout. I have never used the self-checkout and not had a problem. I usually have a few problems, whether it's with an item that just won't scan, or the machine misinterpreting something. When I go to my bank, I go to the counter, rather than using the ATM. Although I usually have a smooth transaction at ATMs, I use them infrequently. I prefer the interaction with the teller, and I usually get cash back when I grocery shop, so don't need to use the bank very often anyway. It will be interesting to see how thieves game this system, because of course they will.