Giant Eagle Teams With Grabango For Checkout-Free Tech

To make a checkout-free payment experience at brick-and-mortar stores, grocery and pharmacy retailer Giant Eagle teamed up with California startup Grabango. Multiple configurations of the company’s platform are in testing at a Giant Eagle location such as a solution based on an app as well as one that enables shoppers to pay with a credit card or cash, Venture Beat reported.

“Giant Eagle has been a fantastic partner on this groundbreaking project,” Grabango CEO Will Glaser said, according to the report. “We are excited to be announcing our first checkout-free partnership with a major U.S. retailer. Together, we are offering a technology that is seamless and equitable for all.”

Grabango has collected 17 patents when it comes to checkout-free technologies and has brought on clients that reportedly serve more than 600 shoppers per year. Its products are also said to be more scalable than offerings of competitors. It is made to function in locations with over 100,000 square feet of floor space and has the ability to monitor hundreds of customers at one time.

As it stands, store deployments are said to range from 2,000 to 50,000 square feet. The system is said to monitor “hundreds of thousands” of stock keeping units (SKUs) and takes away the need for workers to inventory store stock manually. It also reported integrates with store operations platforms and existing point-of-sale (POS) systems.

In January, Grabango announced that it had raised $12 million in venture funding. The startup said in a press release at the time that it raised the funding via an oversubscribed Series A financing round. The funding was led by Propel Venture Partners with investment participation from Abstract Ventures, Commerce Ventures, Ridge Ventures and Founders Fund.

With the latest round of fundraising, Grabango said in the press release that it had notched $18 million in funding. The company said the funding will go to boost its product development team and expand the deployment of its technology in more stores.