Amazon will soon has come up with a new business vertical. The predominantly e-commerce brand that has reaped in massive benefits by branching out to verticals such as cloud, offline retail etc., will now start selling the check-out technology behind its recently opened cashier-less stores, to other retailers. Amazon confirmed the same to The Tech Portal. This was first reported by Reuters.
Amazon has made live, a new website that will sell this tech, dubbed as ‘Just Walk Out’. Amazon says that it already has a slew of consumers lined up to buy this tech, though names haven’t been revealed.
The company is known to successfully monetize tech that it develops for internal use, by selling it to third-party buyers. Take for example, Amazon’s warehouse tech which includes packaging, delivery and logistics or the multi-billion cloud business under AWS. AWS, over the past decade or so, has become such a big force, that even core cloud computing businesses such as those from Microsoft and Google, are finding it tough to battle it out with the company when it comes to large, lucrative deals.
While talking to Reuters, Amazon’s vice president for physical retail, Dilip Kumar, said, “Do customers like standing in lines?” he asked. “This has pretty broad applicability across store sizes, across industries, because it fundamentally tackles a problem of how do you get convenience in physical locations, especially when people are hard-pressed for time.”
While intricate details on how this ‘Just Walk Out’ tech works on third-party stores are awaited, what is known, is that this will be a partly white-labelled solution. Unlike Amazon Go stores, where consumers scan an app, these third-party retailers will have a turnstile that will work when a credit card is inserted into it. Once the transaction is approved, the gated turnstile will display the logo “Just Walk Out technology by Amazon,”, and consumers can walk in to the store to shop. Rest of the branding will remain under the control of the store owner.
Items picked up by a customer and any guests who enter with them will be added to the shopper’s virtual cart. The store will then bill the credit card once the person or group leaves the store – no bar code scans or checkout lines necessary.
The tech will be an end-to-end solution. This basically means, that the all allied accessories, such as software, computer systems, security etc. will be come bundled with the tech. In the same conversation with Reuters, Kumar said Amazon will install the technology including ceiling cameras and shelf weight sensors at retailers’ stores, whether they are new locations or retrofits, and it will have a 24-7 support line. However, shoppers’ customer service needs, including returns, are managed by the retailer directly.
