[thu2111]

Whilst Amazon Go is cool, that's not an argument in its favour. That's purely a US specific screwup. In the rest of the world you can clear contactless transactions in a few hundred milliseconds with competent retailers; that's why it's possible to tap your way through the gates at busy London Underground stations. And retailers love contactless exactly because it's so fast and it lets them reduce staffing/handle more customers.

I don't know about your part of the US but it's now pretty common everywhere in Europe to have nearly unmanned retail stores. All the checkouts are self service. You can grab a portable scanner at the front, scan items as you walk around grabbing them and then tap your card at a checkout kiosk.

Amazon's implementation sounds even easier (no scanning required), but in terms of raw throughput it's probably only a bit better.

[filoleg]

That still doesn't solve the problem of waiting while people get all their items scanned, and I doubt that countries outside of the US have managed to solve that one.

Imo there is nothing in terms of convenience and speed that can beat "just walking out".

[randomsearch]

Serious question - how widespread is self checkout in the US? I rarely queue at local supermarkets in the UK, I can checkout in <30s with a few items.

[filoleg]

Cannot speak for the whole country, but after living in cities on both coasts, I can say it is extremely widespread. The issue is that even with 10 self-checkout stations, there will be a queue at "normal" times of the day, as there are a lot of people shopping at any "normal" time. And that's not even a particularly large store I am talking about, it is a local QFC. I spend at least 5 minutes just waiting in line every time wanting to buy something. Not even mentioning the process of scanning, bagging, etc.

One cool thing about Amazon Go is that it actually sends you an email afterwards telling you how much time you spent at the store. Without failure, my overall times range between 30 seconds and 2.5 minutes. While for a regular grocery store, I would estimate it to be at the very least 10 mins for an equivalent amount of items purchased. Maybe it is my own quirk, but it deeply annoys me to spend time doing things in an inefficient manner, whereas I know I can do them much more efficiently AND with less effort.

[brownbat]

Self checkout is nearly ubiquitous in US grocery stores, where I barely ever wait at all for checkout. It's rare in places like convenience stores or the large pharmacies (would you call it a chemist if it sells overpriced groceries too?)

Judging from visits to London, our grocery culture is different mainly in that we usually buy weeks of food at once. Some people still use checkers to help them efficiently get through a giant cart of food. And our grocery stores are often gigantic, maybe dozens of lanes of checkout side by side, where in Europe I often see maybe... two?

I've waited in lines in UK and European stores, (Fortnam during the holidays?), but rarely waited in grocery stores over there, even in places without self check. There's just much less foot traffic in any individual grocery because they're so much smaller.

But maybe I'm just comparing US suburbs with UK cities, not sure.

[twblalock]

It's pretty widespread, but I frequently have to wait in line to use the self-checkout machines. It doesn't necessarily get me out the door faster.

[pkaye]

Most of the major supermarket or big box stores has self checkout. They will always have a few lines with staff but the majority is self checkout these days. A good portion of the people buy a huge amount of stuff at a time and the lines can get long. Typically the people with a few items tend to go to the self checkout line.

[arh68]

It seemed rare 3-4 years ago, but now Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Target, they all have ~6-12 s/c registers, sometimes at each end of the store (often so far apart a line forms at one, while the other remains empty).

There seem to be a lot of cashiers on weekends, but fewer overall. So many unused lanes, most of the year.

[roel_v]

What waiting to get items scanned? I can't remember the last time I had to wait for that. (you're talking about people waiting in line for other people to scan their items, right?)

[manquer]

you don't need to wait.. You get a portable scanner, you scan them as you pick them or whatever, no need to scan in a queue.

[Polylactic_acid]

We have pretty close to instant transactions here in Australia but I every now and then I find a place where it takes 30-60 seconds for it to process. I think the issue is actually just the store has bad network coverage and the machine fails multiple times before it can send the transaction properly.

[BigJono]

I believe they do some sort of local batching of transactions then settle them all at once. You can see this sometimes if you go shopping early in the morning and you're the first person to use a particular EFTPOS terminal for the day, the UI will show a few extra steps in the processing workflow.

[Polylactic_acid]

I'm not sure how this would work. Surely they must have to contact the card company to process the payment as soon as it happens since they have to show the accepted/declined message before the customer walks off.