KROGER IS TAKING A DIRECT SHOT AT AMAZON AND WALMART AND MAKING CHECKOUT LANES OBSOLETE

Kroger’s new “Scan, Bag, Go” service is rolling out to 400 stores in 2018. AP

• Kroger‘s new “Scan, Bag, Go” technology allows customers to scan and pay for goods as they shop.
• The grocery chain is rolling it out to 400 stores in 2018.
• Amazon revealed plans in December to introduce a similar technology to its own brick-and-mortar grocery concept, called Amazon Go, which is still in the planning phases.
• Walmart is also testing its own cashier-less technology in more than a dozen stores in Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky.

Kroger is beating Amazon and Walmart in the race to give shoppers a cashier-free shopping experience.

In 2018, the grocery chain is rolling out a new service to 400 stores that will enable shoppers to scan and pay for their items without checkout lanes, registers, or cashiers.

Here’s how it works: shoppers scan the barcodes of items they wish to purchase using a handheld scanner, provided by Kroger, or the chain’s “Scan, Bag, Go” app on any smartphone.

The technology will keep a running tab of shoppers’ total order and offer applicable coupons. It will also eventually alert customers when they walk past an item on their shopping list.

When customers are finished shopping, they can visit a self-checkout register to pay for their order. Soon, shoppers will be able to skip that step and provide payment through the app instead, the company said. That means they won’t have to stand in line or visit a register at any point during their shopping trip.

Shoppers can scan the barcodes of items they wish to purchase using a handheld scanner, provided by Kroger, or the chain’s “Scan, Bag, Go” app on any smartphone. Kroger

Amazon revealed plans in December to introduce a similar technology to its own brick-and-mortar grocery concept, called Amazon Go, which is still in the planning phases.

Walmart is also testing its own cashier-less technology in more than a dozen stores in Texas, Florida, South Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky.

Kroger will be the first to offer the technology to a mass market, however, when it expands the “Scan, Bag, Go” program to 400 of its more than 2,700 stores in 2018.