Dive Brief:
- Ahold Delhaize's Retail Business Services will expand its Scan It! Mobile checkout program to around 30 stores by the end of the year, according to a release. The "frictionless" technology is currently in use at select Stop & Shop and Giant Heirloom Market stores.
- Customers can use the Scan It! app to scan product barcodes, then exit through a dedicated lane while their purchase is automatically processed. Shoppers can also utilize handheld devices available at the front of the store, then transfer their session over to a smartphone for payment.
- Customers can link their Venmo, Google Pay, Apple Pay and PayPal accounts into the program for payment.
Dive Insight:
As Ahold Delhaize continues to update stores and roll out new formats like Giant Heirloom Market, keeping up with the latest checkout technologies is a priority. The company describes its scan-and-go technology as a "frictionless" experience that integrates popular payment programs and lets shoppers breeze through a dedicated checkout lane.
Scan It! is currently available at two Giant Heirloom Market locations and 22 Stop & Shop stores, including newly remodeled stores in Connecticut, Massachusets and New York's Long Island region. Five additional Giant stores in Pennsylvania are slated to incorporate the technology by the end of this year.
Ahold Delhaize's measured rollout is consistent with the company's strategy of carefully innovating and measuring results with customers. Stop & Shop has introduced new technology and layouts at 21 locations in Connecticut and plans to gradually expand the update's across the chain's 400 stores over the next few years.
Scan-and-go technology in various forms has rolled out across the industry as consumers demand a more convenient checkout experience. Companies have positioned systems as friction-free. In reality, shoppers still need to weigh items like produce before scanning, and systems will flag random shoppers for an audit, or require each customer to have their order verified by a store employee.
The technology is a high theft risk due to imperfect auditing systems and the reliance on customers to scan every product, according to one expert interviewed by Grocery Dive. A 2018 study also found low consumer adoption, with just 2.8% of more than 140 million transactions coming through scan-and-go.
