Walmart’s pilot program of the scan and go check out feature for iPhone is now being extended to over 200 stores, a substantial increase over the 70 stores currently participating in this program. The program began towards the end of 2012 in Arkansas and was then extended out to Atlanta. Using this feature, customers shopping at these Walmart stores scan barcodes on the items they want to purchase through the Walmart app and can then pay for them at the designated self-checkout counters. Even while using scan and go, the payment has to be made in the traditional way. There is a possibility that Walmart may consider mobile payment solutions, but it is not known as yet if the company is working on any such projects.
The pilot program is going to dictate user experience based on which Walmart will make the decision to roll out this feature in more stores. It currently has over 4,000 stores in the U.S. At this point in time the feature is only available for Apple devices, but Walmart says that soon it will be released for Android as well. Walmart aims to digitize customer’s shopping experience, and given how the vast majority uses smartphones, we just might see other retail chains doing something along the same lines.