Sam’s Club rolls out receipt verification tech at 120 stores

Receipt verification technology unveiled by Sam’s Club in January is now available at about 20% of its stores (roughly 120 locations), the company announced on Tuesday. 

The Walmart-owned warehouse club said in a press release that the technology uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to capture images of shoppers’ carts and verify payment.

The tech aims to reduce shopper friction upon leaving the store. “This translates to all members leaving the club 23% faster. Sam’s Club is uniquely positioned as the first retailer to not only extensively deploy this technology at scale, but also to successfully build, design, and roll it out in-house, addressing member pain points in the purchase-to-exit process,” the company said.

Sam’s Club plans to deploy the technology at all 600 of its locations by the end of 2024. 

The technology builds on Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go tech, which enables shoppers to scan products with their smartphones and skip the traditional checkout. 

“Now after a member completes payment at a register or via Scan & Go, a combination of computer vision and digital technology deployed in the exit area of the club captures images of carts and verifies payment for all items within a member’s basket,” the company said.

The new tech comes at a time of rapid change for checkout-free technology in the grocery industry.

In early April, Amazon announced that it was moving away from its “Just Walk Out” technology, which uses AI to allow shoppers to take items and have them added directly to their bill through the use of artificial intelligence.  

Meanwhile, German discount grocer Aldi is experimenting with checkout-free tech through a pilot project with Berkeley, Calif.-based tech company Grabango. The fast-growing small-format grocery chain began testing Grabango’s AI-powered technology, which works similar to Amazon’s “Just Walk Out tech”, in November of 2023.