Didn’t Amazon try this in some of their grocery stores? Everything is radio tagged. Just put items in your bags/cart and walk out. Automatically charges your card. No scanning, no clerk. I am not sure of the details they employed but technically it could work. Maybe you have to swipe your card but all the “work” of checking out is done by radio frequency. If I recall Amazon wanted fingerprints but that’s unnecessary. RFID could do almost all the checkout and you just pay. No waiting.
I was at Home Depot the other day, happened to be in the same center and needed some radiator coolant. I was headed to the self checkout and a woman checker clerk flagged me down. I told her I was glad she did that, job security. If corporate sees a checker only doing a small number of receipts they are likely to eliminate her job or scale back her hours. But it’s a losing battle. It is heading towards automation.
I was in the grocery store, a young kid was clearly new on the job. I teased him about having to scan the fruit and vegetables. I told him back in the day checkers needed to know all the fruits and veggies, or had a big book to look it up - and had to wring up the price by hand. An “old timer” heard me and said “we’ve still got that book around here somewhere”.
Amazon One makes a hash code of your palm print which is then authenticated against the database and your credit 💳 card or debit 💳 card is charged.
Although one can bypass for cash still, you can log in via palm print or cellphone 📱📱 to enter some of their stores ( Whole Foods pilot stores and others).
I think Amazon did. I’ve never shopped there in person to see it.
The problem is that the RFID will remain on many things you buy and keep in your home - unless they now have a process to deactivate it, and it seems that would be quite a task. I think a lot of people wouldn’t like all of their purchasing habits hanging out there on the airwaves like that.
But it will probably happen anyway, eventually
Amazon did this in San Francisco on Market Street. Shortly after opening, City "leaders" shut down the store, saying it was unfair to homeless people who didn't have cards in order to enter the store. Of course, unfair meant they couldn't enter and shoplift without paying. Lots of shoplifting on the same block at other stores like Walgreens and CVS, and the goods were openly sold on the sidewalks nearby.