Baseline Magazine has an article about the purchase experience catching up to technology capabilities. Personally, I think anything that improves checkout time is well worth the effort.
his may soon change. Apple—which has already eliminated POS terminals in its stores and provides e-receipts—rolled out its EasyPay service on November 8. It allows customers to scan the barcode for an item using an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s, view ratings and reviews and then pay using a credit card registered to an iTunes account. In addition, the app shows availability of products at various Apple stores and provides a consolidated view of current and past orders. It also displays tracking data for shipped orders.
Meanwhile, grocery chain Kroger has tested a new technology called Advantage Checkout that uses a scan tunnel similar to what airlines and airports use to scan luggage tags facing every direction (it is manufactured by Fujitsu). The system relies on a battery of image scanners as well as optical character recognition (OCR) to identify products and scan them in large volumes. A pilot in Hebron, Kentucky that began in 2010 has achieved a 98.5 percent accuracy rate.
Even better, I found a video on YouTube that shows the Advantage Checkout in action. My only comment, “Faster Please!”
