Nomitri Launches its Smartphone-Based Cashierless Checkout at a LÜNING Store in Germany
Nomitri Launches its Smartphone-Based Cashierless Checkout at a LÜNING Store in Germany
This is the first public partnership for Nomitri.
Nomitri announced today that its smartphone-based cashierless checkout system is now available for shoppers at the Edeka center LÜNING Rietberg, in Rietberg Germany. This is the first public retail partnership for Nomitri.
Customers just need to have a LÜNING card and download the Nomitri mobile app (and be at least 18 years old). The shopper places their phone in a special holder installed on the cart (with the camera facing down into the cart) and launches the Nomitri app. Items are placed in front of the phone camera where Nomitri scans the barcode to keep a tally of what’s put in the cart. The app also has computer vision to see if anything extra has been placed in the cart without scanning it first, to prevent theft. Once shopping is done, Nomitri adds up the bill and creates a barcode that is presented at a special checkout area where the customer is automatically charged.
There are similar mobile phone-based scan-n-go type checkout solutions on the market from Skip and 7-Eleven. But the bigger hook with Nomitri is all the artificial intelligence brains it packs on the mobile device itself. Because it runs all of that computer vision and everything else on the app on the phone, a store doesn’t need to add any computing power on-site, Nomitri does not need network connectivity to work, and privacy is kept because video data doesn’t leave the device.
While there are a number of cashierless checkout solutions coming to market, Nomitri’s approach could be appealing to retailers because it doesn’t require much effort to get started. Unlike Grabango or Zippin or Trigo (which is working with REWE stores in Germany), Nomitri doesn’t require the rerofitting and installation of cameras and sensors in the store. And unlike smart cart solutions from players like Caper and Veeve, Nomitri only requires a phone holder be installed on existing carts. The tradeoff with this lightweight approach, however, is that Nomitri does require the shopper to do more “work” by scanning each item individually, instead of creating a true walk-in-grab-what-you-want-and-go experience.
The entire cashierless checkout space got a little bit of a boost this Fall when Instacart acquired Caper Labs for $350 million. With its huge network of retail partners, Instacart now has the ability to nudge cashierless checkout into more grocery stores across the country.
On a more dour note, adoption of cashierless checkout could accelerate as we go through more waves of the COVID pandemic. Retailers looking to protect both employees and shoppers by reducing human-to-human interaction could find these contactless, cashierless retail experiences more appealing.