Your phone could soon liberate you from supermarket lines

BY SAMANTHA COONEY2 HOURS AGO

Imagine an entire shopping trip without long lines or human interaction. The days of suffering through a mile-long-line on a shopping excursion might soon come to an end.

At this weekend'sNational Retail Foundation's "Big Show" in New York, Diebold, which produces self-service finance products, will introduce what it's dubbed a "contact-less self-checkout concept."

The concept, per a Diebold press release, will allow grocery store customers to skip the check-out lines and instead scan items with their phones as soon as they stuff them into their cart.

At the end of the shopping trip, customers will stop by a self-checkout machine — another Diebold product known as the "Irving" — where they can either pay with cash on the machine or through a credit card through tapping the phone's mobile wallet, which will have credit card information on file.

That's not to say that the product doesn't come with potential problems: namely, how retailers will regulate that the concept, which is essentially rooted in the honor system that customers will scan each item they're purchasing on their own, to prevent against theft.

Richard Harris, Diebold's vice president, new technology incubation and design, told Mashablethat the Irving self-checkout machine is how Diebold believes stores can assure customers are paying up. "We feel that the use of Irving as the fulfillment point of the payment process whether the consumer is using cash or not, creates a security checkpoint that will deter consumers from theft," he said.

"Also, the fraud costs have to be compared to the opportunity for savings on technology and staff as well as increased customer base as consumers seek stores that offer this technology," he said.

And the product isn't yet complete — Harris says that the technology is still in the concept stage. "Should we find that this experience has value to retailers and consumers alike, we will search for pilot customers to help us validate our assumptions in market," Harris says.

But Diebold is starting early conversations with a few retailers about potential pilots of the technology, so perhaps you'll get a chance to try out this new way of shopping sooner rather than later. May we suggest Trader Joe's as its first client?

And hey, if it doesn't catch on, there's always another way your phone could make your life easier: shopping online.