Amazon to Pilot ‘Just Walk Out’ Tech at Whole Foods Locations

Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology will be trialed at Whole Foods locations in Washington, D.C.’s Glover Park neighborhood and Sherman Oaks, California, giving shoppers the option of skipping the checkout line, according to a blog post on Wednesday (Sept. 8).

“We launched the technology first in Amazon Go several years ago, and since then, we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from customers who love being able to quickly and easily shop and skip the checkout line,” said Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology. The stores will get the new technology in 2022.

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Shoppers at stores enabled with Just Walk Out technology don’t need an Amazon account or the app; they just enter the market with a credit card, according to Amazon’s website. The technology automatically detects which items people keep and tracks everything in a virtual cart.

“Just Walk Out technology is made possible by a combination of computer vision, sensor fusion and deep learning — similar to what you’d find in a self-driving car,” Kumar explained.

Amazon first launched cashierless technology in 2018 at its Amazon Go stores, and then expanded it to its Amazon Fresh locations. More recently, the eCommerce giant started offering the technology to other stores as a business-to-business (B2B) service. The Go technology requires the use of the Amazon app, while Just Walk Out only requires the use of a credit card.

See also: Amazon Sells ‘Just Walk Out’ Technology to Merchants

Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion, as PYMNTS reported. At that time, Whole Foods had more than 460 locations. The supermarket chain currently has 350 retail and non-retail locations across the U.S., Canada and U.K., according to its website.

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Shoppers have three ways to pay using Just Walk Out: scanning the QR code in the Whole Foods or Amazon app, waving their palm using Amazon One or inserting a credit or debit card linked to their Amazon account, according to the blog post