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As I highlighted in How To Really Kill Cash, cash is still the only truly realtime, irrevocable retail payment method in the world (Source: DB Research). Cash is also the only form of payment that accomplishes transfer of value between payor and payee without any dependency on bank, hardware, software, network, battery, and other third parties.

@AlexanderPeschkoff:

LOL but stranger things have happened viz. "Reach checkout; enter PIN to get past lockscreen; locate mobile wallet app; locate card; scan QR code; blah blah blah". Mobile wallet simply won't work in a supermarket where there's a long queue. But the last year's re/demonetization in India provided a good learning opportunity: Most other types of stores - e.g. apparel stores, bookstores, mom-and-pop stores - don't have such a long queue at checkout. Despite the fact that a mobile wallet entails a longer-drawn out process compared to cash / plastic card, I think it's still quite usable at many stores.

@JamesPiggot:

'Self scan and check out as you move around the store' has been around for nearly 15 years based on dedicated scanners, which, AFAIK, are RFID readers I mentioned in my previous comment.

The way I understand "Scan & Go" in the context of this article, it's similar to what they call "Mobile Self Checkout". By definition, MSC works on customer's smartphones, not dedicated scanners owned by stores.

By "app that tells the shopper they can get that item cheaper down the road", you probably mean "showrooming". If so, such apps have been around for 5-7 years e.g. RedLaser, Amazon PriceCheck, Scandid. A few years ago, showrooming was expected to go mainstream but that hasn't apparently happened so far. More in my blog post on my company blog How Can Organized Retailers Respond To Showrooming? (hyperlink removed to comply with Finextra Community Rules but this post should appear on top of Google Search results when searched by its title).

Hypothetically, if RFID solution has become affordable now, Scan & Go is redundant.

The data carried by the RFID tag (e.g. price) is known only to the retailer. Ergo manufacturer can't "incorporate the labels into the items".

There are at least 3 similar products that failed to go mainstream in the US. In my blog post Coin Solves A Pain. But Is It A 100 Dollar Pain?, I'd done a quick "cost-benefit analysis" of COIN, the pioneer in this product category. An overwhelming majority of readers who took the survey on my blog post said they'd pay not more than US$ 10 for it. Good luck to Da Vinci card with its £75 price tag.

Well, if you put an RFID label on each item, you don't need Scan & Go. Actually, Metro Germany and a couple of other big box retailers conducted pilots using RFID labels in circa 2002, which was well before smartphones came into existence. The shopping cart had an RFID scanner. As items embedded with RFID labels were dropped into the cart, they were automatically scanned and the bill was printed out at the end. (Alternatively, there were a few central RFID scanner gantries at checkout, you could simply wheel out your cart through them, all items would be (theoretically) scanned at one shot, so there was no queue). This solution was also pilfer-proof. However, it failed to gain traction because of the high cost of the labeling solution in terms of material cost of the RFID tag and labor cost of affixing them on each and every item in the store. Memory serves, Scan & Go type of solutions were developed as a more cost-effective alternative for RFID based solutions. AFAIK, the RFID solution is still too costly for mainstream adoption even today. So RFID add-on to Scan & Go is a non-starter.

'Scan & Go' has been around for years. It failed to set retail on fire because it let shoppers easily carry out pilferage by simply not scanning an item before dropping it into their shopping cart. To solve that problem, a store anyway had to have its security guard physically verify that all items in the basket were scanned and paid for. Keen on knowing if Scan & Go has solved that problem. In any case, doesn't Scan & Go sound a little dated in the age of Amazon Go? 

In my post Banks Will Know Chipotle Is Going Bankrupt Before Chipotle, I’ve quoted several examples of banks making excellent use of data gathered not only from the earth but also from the sky to make a quick buck. That said, banks may need to be more cautious than other industries in how far they go with data (probably because they handle money, which is different from goods and services). Like in the example quoted in my post, while customers say they want personalized offers and do like the ones they get from Uber et al, they tend to find the ones they get from banks quite creepy.

@AndrewStrong: I'm not debating the process. I'm only wondering why it can't be expedited. After it's not called Slower Payments:) And, if memory serves, vendor selection took about a year the first time around 10-12 years ago, shouldn't it happen lot faster than that, considering that "agile" has gone mainstream in SDLC now?:)

@JohnQuamina: Please correct me if I'm wrong but functional and technical requirements are written after the vendor is selected. Ergo, their completion shouldn't be a prerequisite for selecting the vendor.

@AnonFinextraMember: I vaguely remember a similar question coming up in the context of MasterCard's acquisiton of VocaLink. Extrapolating from my fading and limited understanding of the answer provided by someone at the time, NPSO is probably not the owner of FPS and will operate whatever FPS infrastructure is given to it by whoever the owner of FPS is.