App lets shoppers skip checkout line
Jennifer Grimm can’t stand lineups, especially at the cash register in her cosmetics and hair products shop.
“Who likes waiting in line?” asks the owner of Lux Beauty Boutique.
“A lineup is very frustrating because it’s a waste of time. Those people should be shopping or we could be actively engaging with them.”
Lux is the first retailer to launch SelfPay, an application that lets shoppers scan products in the store, check prices and other details, and pay for them on a smartphone — skipping the checkout line entirely.
“What I love is that it enhances that high-touch, endto-end client experience. For instance, a customer comes in and they’re in the makeup chair getting their makeup done. They’re having this really great experience.
“Traditionally, up until today with SelfPay, you’d have to bundle up all your products that you’ve decided to buy and then interrupt that experience and go line up at the till.”
SelfPay was developed by Toronto-based Digital Retail Apps, whose CEO and founder, Wendy MacKinnon Keith, was looking for a way to help independent retailers speed up transactions, leapfrogging big-box stores with their self-checkout lines.
“The concept is to allow a consumer to shop and pay in one integrated flow in a physical retail store,” said MacKinnon Keith.
SelfPay can be downloaded from the Apple App Store for iPhones running iOS7. An Android version will be released in early 2014. Consumers set up an account and add a credit card to the profile.
“If you’re in Lux and you open the app, it will land you on the in-store shopping page for Lux and then you can scan a product from the aisle. It’s kind of like an e-commerce experience but in the physical world,” said MacKinnon Keith.
Customers receive digital receipts which are scanned by the retailer as they leave the store to verify payment.
SelfPay offers advantages to both the shopper and retailer, she said.
“The consumer can shop at your own pace and avoid standing in the classic checkout line waiting for the cashier to scan your items.”
MacKinnon Keith says it also frees up the retailer’s staff to focus on offering advice and assistance rather than ringing up sales.
She pointed to a November study released by online employment site Workopolis, which listed retail cashiers among jobs that won’t exist in 10 years. Self-checkouts are expensive and proprietary technology while payby-phone platforms used by coffee shops and other retailers still need a cashier to scan the customer’s phone, MacKinnon Keith said.
SelfPay is being adopted at a second retailer, Torontobased Gotstyle, in January.
For Grimm, who met MacKinnon Keith by chance two years ago at a national retail convention in the United States, SelfPay allows her to tap into the growing use of smartphones by shoppers.
“For three days at the show, I was listening to the future of retail and how it’s been completely upended by the mobile phone, how it’s changed consumer behaviour and how retailers should be looking to respond to this,” Grimm said.
But she wasn’t certain how a small, indie shop could adapt to smartphone retailing.
“I’m not Saks Fifth Avenue or Burberry or any of these other people who were attending. How do I get in on that?
“I happened to find myself by Wendy and we started chatting and she tells me about this app that she’s just started developing.”