A new trend is being witnessed in Qatar’s shopping sector. It is the rise of cashierless stores, offering shoppers a smoother, easier and faster shopping experience.
The future of shopping is here with smart retailing, encouraging retailers to launch ambitious in-store, digital technology. Retailers in Qatar are bringing outstanding in-store smart and eco-friendly technologies, transforming the local shopping experience.
Smart retailing is an approach that treats technologies as factors that enable innovation and improve the quality of life of consumers, providing them with better, faster, safer and smarter shopping.
Slowly becoming widespread in Qatar is cashierless shopping. Also known as self-checkout, checkout-free or autonomous shopping, cashierless shopping is a checkout system that detects shoppers’ product preferences and bills them when they close their shopping trip. It is a payment service that allows you to personally scan and pay for the purchase of certain items. Be your own cashier!
The world first heard of this new concept with Amazon when it introduced Amazon Go, a cashierless convenience store, in 2016.
Carrefour Qatar’s self-check out counters
The first to introduce self-check out counters in Qatar is Carrefour Qatar. In 2020, Carrefour Qatar launched self-checkout counters at its hypermarkets in City Center Doha, Villaggio Mall and Landmark Mall to speed up the shopping experience for customers.
At least six self-checkout counters are available at each of the three locations, considerably reducing queue lengths and customer waiting times.
Available to those with small baskets of up to 10 items, customers can scan their products and complete their cashless transaction with a credit or debit card. Customer support staff members are present at the counters to help customers with the process.
According to Carrefour Qatar, the new service underlines Carrefour’s commitment to offering a convenient shopping experience by bringing extra efficiency to the retail journey. The service also demonstrates Carrefour’s dedication to providing customers with more freedom of choice when shopping, by offering alternative payment options and checkout processes.
Carrefour Qatar is the first retail company to introduce self-checkout counters in the country. The self-checkout counter is the latest addition to Carrefour’s services and is part of a series of innovations due to be gradually rolled out.
Al Meera Smart
In early 2023, Al Meera Consumer Goods Company opened Al Meera Smart, Qatar’s first fully autonomous checkout-free store, at Aspire Park.
Al Meera partnered with Zippin, a leading provider of checkout-free technology, to advance its expansion strategy to meet customer demands and provide unique services to all members of the community through innovative technology. In addition to Al Meera Smart at Aspire Park, Al Meera will soon open more fully autonomous stores in strategic locations in need of a mini-market to provide visitors with snacks, beverages, grab-and-go meals, and other essential items in a quick, seamless, self-service and cashier-less process.
Powered by Zippin’s multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the frictionless smart stores operate through a collection of cameras and sensors that track the customers from point of entry until they leave, speeding up the purchasing process and make shopping transactions faster, simpler, less stressful and more enjoyable to customers.
Saving customers the need to queue for payment after grabbing their grocery items, shoppers can create a virtual shopping cart, put the items in their pocket, bag/purse, or simply carry them, and the software will directly charge the cost of the purchased items from the customer’s credit card as soon as they leave the shop.
Zippin combines vision cognition technology with machine learning to accurately account for the behaviour of shoppers and whereabouts of products in-store. To date, 60 Zippin-powered stores have been launched around the world serving 625,000 shoppers. The Zippin-powered stores have helped save 104,000 shopping hours by eliminating checkout lines.
In addition to cashier-less Al Meera Smart, Al Meera has a few branches with cashier-less counters. In addition, there is a new and operational self-service branch in the QatarEnergy District in Al Dafna.
In addition to Al Meera Smart, MONOPRIX Msheireb is Qatar’s first smart retail outlet. It opened in 2021 in Msheireb Galleria in Msheireb Downtown Doha (MDD). Although it’s not a cashierless store, MONOPRIX Msheireb offers smart shopping services to its customers. The supermarket provides its famous Concierge and the Shop & Go concepts, making the shopping experience for residents and visitors more convenient and comfortable. It offers an extensive organic range of 12,000 items sourced internationally, as well as a new dine-in Qatari-food concept, sushi bar, and pasta and pizza corner.
LuLu Express
In September 2023, LuLu Group International opened their first cashier-less check-out free store LuLu Express at Hamad International Airport (HIA) Metro Station.
According to Lulu, LuLu Express is one of the first cashier-less check-out free stores in Qatar and the region.
Powered by Commercial Bank’s payment acceptance solution in its pursuit of digital innovation, the Bank states the new convenience store provides fast, secure, and contactless check-out experience for customers.
A customer can enter the store using his or her credit card, and then walk-out after finishing shopping without any interaction with cashiers or self-checkout counters.
Every item picked by the customer at the store is automatically added to the customer’s digital shopping cart, and the purchase is completed when the customer leaves the store. There will be no queues, no cashier, and no waiting time at the counter to check-out either.
Transactions based on facial recognition will be a key feature of future banking. It is about how to protect customers in a convenient manner using technology. That will be an enhanced security feature that gives customers great comfort and enhanced security.
By Ola Diab
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