Exclusive: Walmart tests iPhone app checkout feature
(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is testing a system that would allow shoppers to scan items using their iPhones and then pay at a self-checkout counter, a move that could trim checkout times and slash costs for retailers.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Walmart's second act on the iPhone: it built an iPhone-compatible shopping site back in December 2008, and now it is testing scan-and-pay inside its own app, following the template Apple set when it updated the Apple Store app with self-checkout in November 2011 and let shoppers scan items themselves on the sales floor. The pickup was broad — Reuters' exclusive ran same-day across eight outlets including Engadget, Ars Technica and Mashable — reflecting how directly the world's largest retailer borrowing Apple's checkout model lands.
The test also slots into a busy stretch for Walmart's tech push: one day earlier it launched the Polaris semantic search engine across Walmart.com and its mobile apps, built on the Silicon Valley team from its April 2011 Kosmix acquisition.
First-order effects
- Shoppers in the test stores can scan items with their iPhones and pay at self-checkout counters, cutting queue time; Walmart shifts scanning labor from cashiers to customers in those lanes.
- Apple's self-checkout pattern moves from a single-brand flagship store to mass-market retail, validating the model beyond Apple's controlled environment.
Second-order effects
- Rival big-box retailers face pressure to match scan-and-pay or compete on checkout speed, since the feature turns smartphone ownership into a store-experience differentiator.
- Self-checkout hardware vendors and POS providers see demand shift toward mobile-scan integration, while cashier staffing models come under cost scrutiny as Walmart chases the promised savings.
Third-order effects
- If scan-and-pay scales, the checkout lane migrates from fixed hardware to the customer's phone, making the retailer's app — not the register — the point of sale and deepening the data link between in-store behavior and Walmart's e-commerce stack.
- Labor economics of retail shift structurally toward fewer transactional roles and more floor-service roles, with regulators and unions likely to weigh in as scanning responsibility transfers to shoppers.
The trend: Retail checkout is migrating from staffed lanes and fixed registers to the shopper's own smartphone, with Apple's self-checkout app as the template and Walmart as the first mass-market adopter testing it at scale.