Upon leaving these stores, customers scan a QR code in the store to confirm they paid.
It’s the latest big retailer to enable its own scan-and-go mobile capabilities, while giant companies like Amazon and Walmart-owned Sam’s Club go cashierless, where customers no longer even have the option to wait in line. Amazon is building out its line of AmazonGo stores and Sam’s Club opened its first cashierless store last week. As of now, cashiers are still present at 7-Elevens and still have to handle hot food items and items like alcohol that require ID to purchase.
“Retailers are looking at the same trend, saying how do we create frictionless experiences,” said Singh. “Imagine every consumer walking with the point of sale in their hand and they don’t have to wait in the line.”
There are currently six AmazonGo stores open in major cities like New York and San Francisco, and Amazon is not appearing to slow down. In September, Bloomberg reported that Amazon aims to open 3,000 AmazonGo cashierless stores by 2021. Retailers like Walmart, Target and Kohl’s have been rolling out ways to check out customers using mobile devices ahead of the holiday season, a move to get customers in and out of stores quickly, a pivot away from getting customers to dwell in stores as long as possible.
7-Eleven has been testing the technology for the past three months at its Store Support Center in Dallas, and it applied customer feedback to the final product. According to the company, the feedback rating from users was high with the majority of people rating the technology a 4.8 out of 5. The adoption was the strongest among customers who only bought one or two items.
During this testing phase, 7-Eleven originally housed the Scan & Pay feature in a separate app than its rewards app but found that customers wanted the experience in one place and have 7Rewards loyalty points applied when they checked out. Singh said 7-Eleven rewards program 7Rewards has 17 million members.
