“Amazon is tasting with larger-scale cash-less supermarkets.

Amazon is fully committed to a future without cash. As far as the Internet giant is concerned, supermarkets would not need any cashiers in the future. Before that, it had already carried out tests in self-built small Amazon Go stores, but now it is also trying to expand into large-scale stores.

That’s what the Wall Street Journal reported last Sunday. The technology works well in small shops, but in a large supermarket such as the one in the United States this does not go well. High ceilings and large scale shops would pose major challenges.

Cash-less shops

Amazon opened its first cash-less store in Seattle in 2016. There it has recently opened two similar shops and three have also opened in Chicago. A new Chicago store and a new one in San Francisco are planned. The new stores that are planned are bigger than ever and that creates a striking problem.

The technology that allows customers to take a product off the shelves, put it in their bag and then walk out of the supermarket without having to scan it is not working properly on the planned scale. According to reports, it didn’t work if more than twenty people were present in the sunshine shop at the same time.

More people

The company is now working to improve the technology for the somewhat larger stores where there are more people at the same time. The cameras and sensors that have to determine what is going on have difficulty working properly in large spaces. That’s why Amazon is now organizing a trial with larger stores, so it can solve those problems.

Amazon wants to open 3,000 Amazon Go-like shops in the United States by 2021. There should be the same number in the United Kingdom and then in other countries. To make this possible, Amazon must, of course, improve the technology.

Amazon is also not the only company working on cash-less supermarkets. Microsoft does the same, as does the Albert Heijn.