E-commerce giant Amazon is reportedly set to announce a new business line selling the technology behind its cashier-less Amazon Go convenience stores to other retailers.
Reuters reports that e-commerce giant Amazon has plans to announce a new business line that will sell the company’s cashier-less technology powering its Amazon Go convenience stores to other retailers. Amazon has reportedly signed “several” deals with customers that it would not name, according to Reuters.
Amazon will reportedly launch a new website on Monday that will invite others to inquire about the service, which is reportedly being dubbed “Just Walk Out” technology by Amazon. Reuters states that this is another example of Amazon building out its internal capabilities, such as are warehouses to help with package delivery and cloud technology to support its website and offering them to other businesses.
The Amazon Go retail stores introduced convenience stores without checkout lines to the wider public and has shown many the benefit of cashier-less stores. Venture firm Loup Ventures has estimated that the market for retail stores without cashiers could grow up to $50 billion. Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, Dilip Kumar, has stated that shoppers’ preferences will determine how big the business becomes.
“Do customers like standing in lines?” he asked. “This has pretty broad applicability across store sizes, across industries, because it fundamentally tackles a problem of how do you get convenience in physical locations, especially when people are hard-pressed for time.”
With Amazon’s new Just Walk Out technology, customers will insert a credit card into a gated turnstile when entering a store rather than scan an app, any items the customer then picks up will be charged to their card. When asked about the services’ business model or pricing, Kumar refused to comment saying “a lot of those are bespoke deals.”
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com