Amazon Opens Its First “No Checkout” Store

USA Today reports:

After a year of testing with its own employees, Amazon opens its store that lets you browse, grab and walk out — skipping the checkout line, but not the bill — to the public Monday.

The convenience store and its proprietary technology, made up of hundreds of cameras and sensors and requiring a new Amazon app, dangled the promise of solving a bedrock complaint for shoppers — long checkout lines — when it was unveiled just over a year ago.

The high-tech approach, crafted by the company that’s most visibly changed how Americans shop in recent years, suggested grocery shopping was on the cusp of its biggest breakthrough since bar codes. To shop in the store, which is about the size of a 7-Eleven, customers must first download the Amazon Go app and link it to a payment method.

Then they open the app on their phone and scan it at the four turnstiles to enter the 1,800 square foot store. Once inside, cameras in the ceiling, sensors on the shelves and a massive amount of computing power track every item they pick up and what goes into their pockets or bags.

The store was supposed to open to the public early last year but the “complexity” of the technology pushed the opening back to today. Below is their original pitch from December 2016.