5 Cashierless Retail Platforms
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted retail in ways that nobody could have imagined, but not all the changes are bad. In a bid to minimize contact between customers and employees, retailers have started investing more heavily in the types of cashierless retail platforms that could truly change the face of the in-store shopping experience.
The push into cashierless retail is nothing new for Amazon. The company was an early entrant in the space, with its chain of Amazon Go convenience stores making their debut as early as 2018. Amazon was also reportedly looking to sell its Go technology to cinemas and airports back in 2019. But the pandemic has accelerated the speed at which retailers are adopting this technology, and now we are finally seeing cashierless retail platforms begin to disrupt the retail space in a real way.
Here are five companies looking to disrupt the retail industry with cashierless sales technology.
Cashierless Retail Platforms
Standard Cognition’s AI-powered autonomous checkout technology enables brick-and-mortar retailers to operate in cashierless environments. Using computer vision, Standard Cognition has developed a system in which customers can walk in, grab the items they want, and then leave a store without stopping to scan their items.
The company says its technology is unique compared to other cashierless retail platforms because it doesn’t rely on facial recognition or biometrics, and it’s quick to install. An additional analytics component is also available to help retailers better understand product performance with real-time inventory updates.
2. Mercaux
Mercaux is working on a way to transform the shopping experience by developing connected stores that offer superior customer experiences with minimal staffing. To assist with transactions, Mercaux relies on its own checkout kiosks that customers can use without the assistance of store personnel.
These kiosks serve as a sort of virtual salesperson, offering virtual styling and product advice, as well as traditional checkout features. Retailers can integrate their existing payment systems with Mercaux’s kiosk, so shoppers can scan, pay, and go all on their own.
3. Grabango
Grabango provides checkout-free shopping technology to retailers with existing stores. Shoppers who have scanned the code in a free mobile app can skip the checkout line and walk out of a store without ever waiting in line to pay. Grabango says this process takes 1/10th of the time of conventional checkouts.
Although Grabango looks similar to Amazon Go, the company says its platform serves a very different purpose. Amazon Go is designed more for small store environments, whereas Grabango is ideally suited for large-format retailers. The company’s computer vision and machine learning technology work with existing operations and can be adopted for many different product mixes.
4. Sensei
Sensei is positioning itself as the future of retail. The company offers technology that existing stores can use to become autonomous and checkout-free. Using a system that relies on AI and cameras, retailers who work with Sensei are able to launch their own checkout-free stores.
In addition to speeding up the shopping experience for consumers who are in a rush, Sensei’s technology provides retailers with a ton of useful data that can be used to personalize and improve the shopping experience. Retailers can also track the products on their shelves to evaluate compliance and identify misplaced items in real-time.
5. Leap
Leap bills itself as a retail platform for growing brands, and it functions very differently from other cashierless retail platforms. Leap primarily works with digital brands to grow their physical retail footprints using integrated omni-channel technology. The company is focused on creating seamless customer experiences.
Leap has been able to link its store systems to the back-end systems most digital retailers are already using. Leap is also very focused on helping retailers scale, leveraging store data and insights to optimize store performance.
Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.
