Walmart
- Sam's Club's new AI-powered purchase verification tech is now in more than 120 locations across the US.
- The Walmart-owned warehouse club says it has helped get shoppers out the door 23% faster.
- Earlier this month, Amazon pulled Just Walk Out from its larger grocery stores in favor of smart carts.
Sam's Club's new verification tech, which ditches physical receipt checks for an AI-powered scan of shoppers' carts, has now been rolled out to more than 120 locations across the US.
The Walmart-owned warehouse club told Business Insider that more than half of customers at locations with the tech use the option to pay and go, helping all the store's shoppers get out the door 23% faster.
First unveiled in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, the futuristic gantries were tested at a handful of Sam's Clubs before rolling out more widely. The locations currently using the tech are in Texas, the Southwest, and parts of the South and Midwest, Sam's Club told BI, with more stores in the South and Midwest coming soon.
The tech taps into the Sam's Club app's Scan and Go feature, allowing shoppers to ring up their orders themselves as they fill their cart and pay in the app.
Shoppers then roll their carts through the big blue gateway where an array of cameras takes pictures of the products and compares them to the order — all without having to stop for the traditional physical receipt check by an associate.
"Both exit technology and Scan & Go are driving new levels of convenience and raising member satisfaction among members," Sam's Club chief product officer Todd Garner said in a statement. "What distinguishes Sam's Club from our competitors is our ability to seamlessly deploy this technology at scale across our nearly 600 clubs nationwide. Whether it's a single item or a cartful, we're revolutionizing the checkout experience."
Earlier this month, The Information reported that Amazon was pulling its Just Walk Out technology from its larger grocery stores, including Fresh and Whole Foods, in favor of sensor-packed Dash Carts.
Amazon said it would continue to deploy the friction-free JWO system in smaller-format locations.
"It's one thing to enable this easy kind of exit tech in a small-footprint store for a handful of items," Sam's Club US's chief merchant, Megan Crozier, said in the company's CES presentation in January. "But we're doing it at scale."
Sam's Club says it still plans to deploy the big blue gates to all of its 599 US locations by the end of the year.
Do you work at Walmart or Sam's Club? Contact Dominick Reuter via email or text/call/Signal at 646-768-4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.