The latest: Autonomous checkout volume is forecast to go up to $21 billion by 2024, a report by Business Insider Intelligence (BII) says. That is a significant rise from a payment volume was under $70 million in 2018.
What’s that: You know, next-gen of retail where shoppers don’t have to go through cashiers to check out. Instead, smart technologies like computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion track a shopper’s tab from the moment they grab a product from a shelf to the time they exit the store. The item is then automatically charged to their account.
Just grab what you want and leave, as Amazon put it. A type of shoplifting only, perfectly legal.
How: Adoption is driven by convenience for shoppers, savings and revenue potential for retailers and scalability of the technology.
At the same time, the scaling potential, alongside with privacy concerns, experience and flexibility are among the hurdles on the road to mainstream adoption.
Tip of the iceberg: Nevertheless, the opportunities are enormous and BII expects the number of stores with autonomous checkout to increase to 10,000 by 2024 from 350 in 2018.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the report said.
Examples: Remember Amazon Go, the cashierless store formate introduced in 2016? Today, there are 15 of them across the US with more in the works.
Companies like Standard Cognition manufacture the tech powering such retailers. With its AI platform, allowing users to grab what they want and go, it struck up a partnership to take its technology in 3,000 stores in Japan.
It also helped the company to raise $35 million in July 2019 at a $535 million valuation.
