Why Hasn’t One-Click Checkout Gained Much Traction Beyond Amazon?

For now, this tech has stalled.

Why Hasn’t One-Click Checkout Gained Much Traction Beyond Amazon?    By Tom Ryan

Research from Cornell University finds adding “one-click” checkout leads online shoppers to increase their website visits, purchase a broader range of merchandise and spend an average of 28.5 percent more versus previous buying levels.

“Because one-click takes so much pain away from the shopping experience, we see consumers willing to spend more time on the site and search for more items,” said Murat Unal, a former Cornell professor who’s now an economist at Amazon.com, in an article for the Cornell Chronicle.

One-click checkout requires customers to store payment and delivery information with the retailer beforehand, eliminating the tedium of doing so with every checkout.

Amazon is known for its “Buy Now” button partly because it held the “1-Click” patent from 1999 until 2017. Amazon licensed the technology to Apple just before the launch of iTunes.

In a Knowledge at Wharton podcast recorded soon after the patent expired, Kartik Hosanagar, a Wharton marketing professor, described one-click as a “huge asset” for Amazon and “a very important event in the history of e-commerce.” He elaborated, “First, it was a very simple and intuitive system and generated a lot of controversy — could something so simple and obvious be patented? Second, it became an important part of the experience that Amazon offered and became a flag bearer for the convenient shopping experience that Amazon came to be known. And finally, it showed how e-commerce was as much about technology and data as it was about retail.”

Paypal, Apple and Shopify have introduced one-click offerings with the promise of reducing cart abandonment, but one-click isn’t as pervasive as some predicted it would become after the patent’s expiration. One-click checkout startups have also faced turbulence with Stripe-backed Fast shutting down last year and Bolt undergoing layoffs earlier this year ...'

7-Eleven Stores in Japan Get Touch-Free Floating Holographic Self-Checkouts

ACM TECHNEWS

7-Eleven Stores in Japan Get Touch-Free Floating Holographic Self-Checkouts By Gizmodo

Six 7-Eleven stores in Tokyo, Japan, will soon feature floating holographic displays that will allow customers to pay for their purchases without any physical contact.

These displays are more hygienic than physical touchscreens and are at lesser risk of damage or wear and tear.

The system replaces LCD touchscreens with Toshiba's Digi POS, which creates the illusion of a touchscreen interface floating in the air.

The holographic touchscreen is not visible to anyone other than the shopper, ensuring privacy.

Shoppers still must scan their items individually, and they can pay for their purchases via touchless payment cards or by scanning their mobile device.

From Gizmodo

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AI Cameras for Theft

Again likely to be adopted commonly, if at least for liability.  We saw it in European future stores a decade ago.

Walmart uses AI camera tech to track checkout theft at 1,000 stores
It might help cut losses, but it raises privacy questions.

Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

Walmart's early use of AI at its stores isn't just for the sake of convenience. The retailer has confirmed to Business Insider that it's using camera-based computer vision tech to deter theft and losses at its checkouts (including self-checkouts) in over 1,000 stores. The simply titled Missed Scan Detection program notifies attendants if an item moves past a scanner without an actual scan, giving staff a chance to step in. Most of the incidents are unintentional, such as forgetful shoppers or fatigued cashiers, but Walmart is clearly hoping this will deter thieves hoping to make off with unscanned items.  ... "

Zippin Combines SmartShelves and Cameras

Zippin with another approach to 'no checkout', but with claims of combining shelf and camera sensors to increase accuracy.  Note also the SRI connection, who we also talked to about shelf tech.

Can Zippin zip past where Amazon Go is going?  by Matthew Stern in Retailwire with expert commentary. 

With only two Amazon Go stores live (the second having just opened this morning, according to KIRO news), there’s still plenty of room for the great disruptor to be disrupted. San Francisco-based Zippin hopes to be the checkout-free grocer that just walks in and wins at “just walk out.”   

Zippin, founded by industry veterans from Amazon and SRI, opened a “just walk out”-enabled concept store in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. In a statement, Zippin notes that while early approaches to autonomous shopping have relied solely on cameras to track purchases, its technology uses a combination of overhead cameras and smart shelf sensors for a higher level of accuracy.

Zippin said in a statement, “Cameras and smart shelf sensors track when and which products are picked up or put back. Combining these two inputs allows Zippin to place the right items in the right shoppers’ virtual carts.”

The start-up said its approach stands out for its ability to work accurately even in a crowded store.

Zippin is marketing its solution, which integrates its own software with readily available hardware, for other grocers to deploy.   ... "