Sam’s Club members will now have the option of using the new scan-and-go mobile checkout service in all 645 Sam’s stores in the U.S. According to recent updates to the company website, shoppers in-store will be able to scan each item’s barcode through an app for their iPhone or Android phone that will keep a running tally of all items in the cart. Said app also offers checkout and payment as options.
When they are done shopping, Sam’s customers can tap to pay and have a receipt sent to their phone — no need to stop at the cash registers. That receipt is then shown to a Sam’s employee on their way out the door, much the way physical receipts are checked to make sure customers are actually paying for all of their items.
Bigger news than Sam’s big rollout of line-free checkout are reports that parent company, Walmart, is piloting a similar mobile checkout at some Walmart locations. Those reports come care of TheStreet. However, other publications have literally reported the exact opposite in recent months — that Walmart had considered mobile pay-and-go but backed of off pilots.
Walmart Pay has been out in the wild for some months, but the question of its utility to customers is still up in the air. Customers can use Walmart Pay, though some analysts have noted Walmart hasn’t given consumers enough reason why they should pass the checkout experience.
Recommendations have included better discounting or loyalty made possible through the service, but it seems Walmart is working on its own custom benefits. Making checkout faster with payments by eliminating the need to line up and wait to pay. That is certainly a reason for any customer to choose Walmart — no one likes to wait in line — though logistical challenges of checking all those receipts could be daunting outside Sam’s environment, where that is already a baked-in feature.
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