Market News

German food retailer separates scanning and payment to speed up checkout

This summer, German-based retail giant The Metro Group, started quietly experimenting with a radical change in supermarket layout and procedure: physically separating where groceries get scanned and where customers make their payments. The move is designed to both cut costs and accelerate customers through the checkout process said Gerd Wolfram, the group\'s chief technology officer and the managing director of Metro Group Information Technology. Metro Group offers both self-checkout and cashier checkout. "The customer comes to the scanning area, then we - as a service - scan the things or the customer scans the things," he said. "The customer receives the bar code ticket for his goods, and he goes to a payment machine. If he pays cash, he can just throw in the coins." Beyond speed and cost-savings, Wolfram said the chain is hoping the new system will be seen as improving payment privacy "because there is nobody looking over their shoulder." Source: eWeek.com - 09/13/06 Prepared by: Lana Holmes & Associates Ltd.with Tim Carter & Associates Inc.