Co-op partners Mastercard to trial in-aisle mobile payments

A Welcome convenience. Personally I can't stand having to wait to pay for goods. I don't have to wait online to pay, so this makes it the same offline and is a positive step forward from the CO-OP.

I can understand how "Customers will be able to scan products" - that's quite established for ages. More interesting thing to know is how retailers will ensure that customers do indeed scan products they put into their shopping basket i.e. don't steal. This has been the bugbear of self-checkout solutions and has prevented them from going mainstream for a long time. 

Self checkout is more than mainstream in the UK - it's the default in most supermarkets these days, especially the smaller convenience ones.  Self scanning is also popping up in most larger supermarkets as well.

True dat @FinextraMember, I remember using self-checkout at Waitrose and other supermarkets more than 10 years ago in UK. I actually meant "mobile self-checkout" solutions aka Scan & Go aka Self-Scanning. TY for pointing out that there's a big difference. 

QSmash is another solution which is providing this service where a customer can scan the product and pay in the app when finishing the shopping. Clearly this the future of the shopping.

TBH we've been hearing that "mobile self-checkout" is the future of shopping for several years. It hasn't become anything like that during this period. Now, in the day and age of Amazon Go, I think mobile self-checkout's days are numbered.

Most of the solutions in the major uk supermarkets (and the Dutch ones) involves the supermarket loaning the customer a dedicated device to do the scanning themselves - these seem to be be being introduced more and more in the larger supermarkets.  Co-op typically has smaller units so I think this is potentially their solution to not being able to justify dedicated devices that the larger supermarkets have.

@Ketharaman Swaminathan Echo your thoughts, and been having the same for the past few years. I haven't experienced self-checkouts, but I still haven't figured out how the retailer ensures no additional un-scanned item(s) was picked up by a customer. Any live examples on this?

Made me laugh.  At my local UK Co-op all the 'premium' alcohol is behind a locked counter as they have no security, and people just walk out without paying at checkouts already.

@Harish Narayanan:

I've heard of only way to prevent pilferage from mobile self-checkout so far. In this method, customers place their shopping bag on a weighing scale. A shop employee tallies off the expected weight (computed from order) against the actual weight (read off the scale). Apparently, this method works only below a certain threshold of weight - 3 kgs if memory serves - because, as the number / weight of items rises, it's not difficult to pilfer a costlier product by scanning a cheaper product that weighs about the same. As a result, above the weight threshold, the shop employee empties out the shopping bag and tallies actual items against the list of billed items. Not a very great CX, if you ask me, but this is the only method I've heard of so far.