Sainsbury’s has introduced till-free shopping at one of its London stores, allowing customers to scan their own items and simply walk out without queueing for a check out.
The retailer is the first UK supermarket to develop an app allowing shoppers to do this.Once you’ve finished shopping, instead of going to the checkout, you hold up your phone to a pay point near the store exit and receive a digital receipt reading: ‘You are now free to leave the store.’
Following a small trial at a shop in London’s Euston station, the system has now been introduced at a branch near Clapham North underground station in London.
The store still has conventional tills and customers will not be obliged to use the new check-out-free service, but the supermarket will increase the number of cameras and security staff to deter shoplifters.
Those that do want to use the new system will have to download a shopping app linked to a Nectar card that uses Apple Pay to take payments.
Sainsbury’s chief digital officer Clodagh Moriarty toldMail Onlinethat one problem with the new service was that some customers “have a sort of nervousness that they are doing something wrong” by skipping the till, however she reassured people that staff would not lose their jobs following the move.
The app follows on from existing Smartshop technology, which allows customers in 68 branches of Sainsbury’s to scan their goods themselves but still pay at a till.
Amazon has its own checkout-free store in the American city of Seattle, but the Sainsbury’s store is the only one of its kind in the UK.
