32% of UK Retailers Plan to Add Support for Scan-and-Go

One in three U.K. retailers surveyed by PYMNTS plan to add support for scan-and-go payment.

The “Instant Payments Transformation Guide: Grocery, Pharmacy And Convenience Retailers,” a PYMNTS and ACI Worldwide collaboration, reveals that 31.5% of retailers in the U.K. plan to add support for scan-and-go payments in the next three years.

In fact, some of the country’s major grocers have already launched apps that allow customers to scan as they shop and pay with their mobile, paving the way for wider adoption across the European retail ecosystem.

One of the leaders in the space, Sainsbury’s, announced in November that it has partnered with Checkout.com to roll out its “SmartShop” self-checkout system across the U.K. following a successful pilot last year.

By combining item-scanning and payment functionality in a single mobile app, solutions like Smartshop are the latest stage in a journey toward ever-more frictionless checkout experiences.

For example, device-based systems have systems that require a separate barcode scanner that people can use to scan items as they put them in their baskets have been in place at many of the countries leading supermarkets for years.

While these systems still require customers to visit a till or self-checkout kiosk to make payment, they are an important stepping stone away from having to scan an entire basket or trolley of goods at the end of each shopping trip.

Rival grocery chains Tesco and Waitrose have also introduced mobile apps with which customers can scan as they shop, but have yet to integrate an in-app payment function.

While Sainsbury’s may be the U.K. supermarket that is closest to the holy grail of an in-store shopping experience where scanning and paying for items can all be done from a mobile app, elsewhere in Europe, the concept has already taken off.

Thanks to a partnership with Worldline, Carrefour has already launched its scan-and-go solution at selected locations in France.

In general, U.K. retailers are more open to the new checkout technology than their U.S. peers.

PYMNTS’ survey found that just one in five (21.1%) of U.S. retailers were planning to introduce scan-and-go payment options in the next three years.

This difference in appetite for new payment solutions can be observed in other areas of innovation too.

While just 11.9% of U.S. retailers said they intend to add support for buy now, pay later (BNPL), 20.1% of U.K. merchants expressed an interest in doing so.

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