BENTONVILLE, AR - Walmart is testing the introduction of an app designed to streamline the shopping process and eliminates long lines at the checkout counter of its busy retail outlets. But is the concept uncannily familiar?
According to tech news source Phone Arena, the retailer’s Walmart Scan & Go app—which is also currently available at the company’s Sam’s Club locations—allows shoppers to bypass the checkout line, pay for goods with your phone, and exit the store hassle free.
The app, available for iOS or Android devices, allows consumers to scan an item’s UPC code as they take products from the shelf and deposit them in their cart. Upon completing their shopping, customers can check out with a familiar ecommerce-style cart on their phones, generate a receipt on their mobile device, and show the receipt to the greeter/security guard at the door.
The app is currently being tested at only one store—Walmart #5260 in Rogers, Arkansas, but the technology is scalable, and it may not be long until the retailer implements Scan & Go checkout at all its locations.
As we previously reported, last month, Amazon unveiled a very similar concept—a flagship Amazon Go grocery store—and the internet basically lost its mind. The online retailer's new format works like this: Upon entering the store, shoppers will scan their mobile QR code from the Amazon Go app at a turnstile. Shoppers then can peruse the location’s selection of value-added prepared items and grocery staples, taking items off the shelf and walking out the door with no other steps.
Amazon has yet to open its flagship Go location in Seattle. And while Amazon Go's checkout process is more streamlined, the advantage Walmart may have over the online retailer is a preexisting infrastructure of over 4,000 stores in the U.S., and more than 11,500 total in 27 countries around the world.
Will Walmart’s potentially-large scale implementation of the app thwart Amazon’s grocery designs? For updates as the occur, stay tuned to AndNowUKnow.
