If Amazon has any say, the future of shopping will have fewer humans in it.

Yay or nay?

Long has being a cashier meant assisting people with paying for their goods, but Jeff Bezos doesn’t care about that. In fact, it is predicted that in 20 years, the profession known as cashier may be extinct.

Amazon’s cashier-free concept store has been in test form since 2016. Now Amazon Go, based in Seattle, will finally open its doors to the public today, reports The Street.

Randomly selected public participants “will be able to shop for groceries at the 1 800 square foot store, and once they are finished, walk out without checking out”.

Game changer.

The New York Times took it for a spin and here’s a snippet of their experience:

The first clue that there’s something unusual about Amazon’s store of the future hits you right at the front door. It feels as if you are entering a subway station. A row of gates guard the entrance to the store, known as Amazon Go, allowing in only people with the store’s smartphone app.

Inside is an 1,800-square foot mini-market packed with shelves of food that you can find in a lot of other convenience stores — soda, potato chips, ketchup. It also has some food usually found at Whole Foods, the supermarket chain that Amazon owns.

But the technology that is also inside, mostly tucked away out of sight, enables a shopping experience like no other. There are no cashiers or registers anywhere. Shoppers leave the store through those same gates, without pausing to pull out a credit card. Their Amazon account automatically gets charged for what they take out the door.

A look at the trackers installed behind shelves packed with food:

There are no shopping carts or baskets inside Amazon Go. Since the checkout process is automated, what would be the point of them anyway? Instead, customers put items directly into the shopping bag they’ll walk out with.

Below, a look at what Amazon hopes it will be:

Of course, the idea isn’t lost on other retailers: more and more are adopting the self-checkout lanes, while America’s Target “tested a robot that would go up and down aisles to scan inventory”.

All in an effort to increase profit margins. Yay.

[source:thestreet&nytimes]