South African retail giant Shoprite tests cashier-less model — An employee restocks shelves with food products inside a Shoprite Holdings Ltd. store in Cape Town, South Africa. South African shoppers with limited spending money are turning to low-cost supermarket chains such as Shoprite Holdings Ltd. for cheaper food and eschewing new clothes to counter accelerating inflation.
Photographer: Dean Hutton/Bloomberg

South African retail giant Shoprite has put on trial the first cashier-less store in the country where customers could serve themselves.

Customers scan a smartphone app to enter the store which is located in Cape Town, then cameras and sensors track what they remove from the shelves. The retailer then bills the customer using credit or debit cards on file.

The Shoprite media team said the cashierless shop “Checkers Rush” is a “no queues, no checkout, no waiting” concept store. It is available to staff at ShopriteX offices, the company’s new digital innovation unit.

“Checkers Rush is one of numerous digital innovations under development by the ShopriteX team. Hundreds of hours of test footage are required to train the algorithms, so it remains an experiment for now,” Shoprite told reporters.