Sam's Club Is Making a Checkout Change You Need to Know About

The time you spend on a "club run" to stock up on favorites at Sam's Club is about to get a little shorter. How will this happen, you ask? Shorter lines when you get to the exit, thanks to AI. Get ready for a new way to leave with your bargain items thanks to an artificial intelligence-powered scan of your shopping cart as you head out the door. The Walmart-owned membership warehouse club has announced that it’s getting rid of the practice of checking physical receipts at the door by employees.

When it comes to planning a shopping trip, we all want to save money and time. The advantages of shopping at a wholesale retailer like Sam's are the savings and product offers—but no one wants to wait in long lines after you complete your trip through the aisles. Sam’s Club wants to take advantage of new technology to cut down on that hassle.

Sam's Club Employees Will Stop Checking Receipts at the Door

"Eliminating even the few seconds it takes to scan a receipt at the exit door is well worth it," Sam's Club U.S.'s chief merchant, Megan Crozier, said in the company's keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas recently.

Shoppers are used to the practice of showing a receipt when leaving places like Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale Club. These types of store policies are in place to double-check that the items purchased have been correctly processed by the cashiers. It is a method of store management to keep an accurate account of inventory control. But the practice of store employees waiting at the exit to check these receipts has also led to complaints, with some customers saying they were subject to more thorough checks than others. The result is usually a bottleneck of impatient people ready to head to their cars.

Members have expressed an interest in a faster and more convenient shopping experience and consistently rated the wait times at the exit—especially during busy shopping periods at the store—as a frustrating part of their trip.

A recent statement gave more detail: “We’re excited about our latest technology advancement that will resolve a key member concern: waiting in line for receipt verification to exit the club. The new tech announced at CES will deliver new levels of convenience by leveraging a first-of-its-kind application of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision technology to eliminate queuing at the club’s exit area.”

A  video presented by Walmart executives states that Sam’s Club will now have customers go through a gate-like system, or "Seamless Exit Technology." Eliminating the need for an employee to look at individual receipts is an innovation that is being offered as a way of improving the future of the retail shopping experience. The technology is equipped with what Walmart says uses “computer vision and digital technology” to verify all store purchases. Walmart has introduced artificial intelligence as a way to keep on top of the management of inventory and stay ahead of customer demand to provide a better customer shopping experience. 

The updated shopping system is currently available at 10 locations with the goal of bringing the changes to all 600 establishments by the end of the year. We can only hope AI delivers on this "seamless" change.