Amazon Go’s Ultra Mobile Payments Scheme May Work Elsewhere with AVA Retail Plan

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While the walk-out-to-pay system that Amazon Go locations are putting to work has captured imaginations for over a decade now, it’s also fairly clear that such a system won’t work for every business. The good news is that this super-mobile payments system will likely work in at least some places, and we know this because there are some who have put it, or something like it, to work.

One of the biggest problems involved in putting in an Amazon Go system is that the hardware involved represents a massive investment. It’s not that retailers aren’t interested, it’s that they straight-up can’t afford to make the kind of investment a company that can run at a loss for years can afford to. That’s actually led other companies to try something similar, like AVA Retail. It’s building what’s called a “closed-loop invisible payments system” any retailer can put in play.

The AVA Retail system is built around a combination of artificial intelligence and computer vision, a combination which can actually be executed in several different ways. One store could ask shoppers to check in with their mobile devices at tapping points or scanning points, and another could use a different approach depending on the individual store’s needs. AVA Retail’s system requires registration with an app called SmoothShop, but thankfully, that’s just a one-time registration.

This raises interesting questions. How can Amazon respond to this? It’s going to be a tough row to hoe, telling retailers “You need this much more expensive system that does the exact same thing this one that costs half as much does because…um…reasons?” Amazon may be able to push its name recognition—why go with some back-alley system when you can have Amazon—but name recognition can only go so far when the choice is between “unaffordable” and “affordable.” It only gets worse when you consider the AVA Retail system can be custom-tailored to each individual shop.

This isn’t good news for Amazon, but it may be great news for its competitors. Since neither system is in wide use yet, there’s a lot of time for things to change. If Amazon can make its system more affordable, it might well win out. If not, competition is waiting to do what Amazon can’t or won’t.

Taking Walk-Out-To-Pay Beyond Amazon Go

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There could be so much more to a cashier-less checkout experience — and for so much less than what Amazon is spending to do it at its bespoke Amazon Go convenience and grocery stores. That’s not to say Amazon Go is a bad system; it just won’t work for every merchant.

As Amazon Go has demonstrated, walking out the door to pay may be the ultimate in terms of a seamless checkout experience. Customers at the eCommerce giant’s brick-and-mortar mini-mart simply go around the store adding the items they need to their shopping cart, then leave the store — triggering an invisible payment to initiate using their Amazon account.

One of the main problems with Amazon’s technology, however, is that creating the experience requires heavy investments in hardware that not every retailer can afford to make.

That’s why other tech companies are cropping up with the means to build a cashier-less checkout experience for the rest of the world. The CEO of one such company, Atul Hirpara of AVA Retail, told PYMNTS how it’s providing a closed-loop invisible payments system that any retailer can adopt.

● SmoothShop Sailing

Hirpara said there are a few iterations of how the technology could be deployed, depending on the needs of the store. The one thing that remains the same is that a combination of computer vision and artificial intelligence must be combined with the mobile app for the solution to work.

Some stores may ask customers to check in when they arrive by tapping their phone or scanning it at a turnstile. After that, said Hirpara, the phone can go back in the pocket or purse, its job complete. The battery could die and the customer could still complete her shopping trip, including the digital payment at the end, because the computer vision hardware at the store is keeping tabs on her activity and will trigger a payment from her registered account when it detects her leaving the store.

The payment happens invisibly, and a digital itemized receipt is sent to the user’s phone within 15 seconds of leaving the store.

AVA Retail encrypts all payment data, he added, so the actual information persists only on the user’s phone — anything within the company’s system is garbled via tokenization so that, even if a malicious actor got a hold of it, he would be unable to pair it with the correct customer’s identifying credentials.

● One App, Many Stores

Initially, customers must sign up and enter their payment information into the SmoothShop app — but that’s just a one-time friction point, said Hirpara. Once they’ve done so, they can use the app to enter, shop and pay at any store that’s implemented it.

While stores can, to an extent, white-label the app so it suits their brand, Hirpara explained that it’s important to house all stores within one app rather than requiring users to download and register for multiple apps at each store where they shop. Separating stores into bespoke apps would create friction rather than resolving it.

He said that’s even more true for stores that customers may only visit once or twice a year, such as a toy store where a customer buys a Christmas and birthday present for a niece or nephew.

● Philosophy

Hirpara said AVA Retail’s goal is to bring the checkout-free retail experience to a wide range of merchants including convenience stores, toy stores, and quick-service restaurants (QSRs) that have five to 10 locations.

He added that the tech is ready to scale and grow with merchants, but the reason for focusing on small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is to help them keep up with bigger competitors, especially the ultimate competitor: eCommerce.

It’s not easy for SMBs to pay enough cashiers, as the bar keeps rising on minimum wage. Hirpara said that automating checkout can minimize the need for clerks, enabling stores to keep a smaller contingency of employees that are able to focus on helping customers as they need it around the store.

● Differentiation

It’s too early to say whether any checkout-free technology is better than another, but Hirpara said there are a few things that AVA Retail has been deliberate about approaching differently, which he believes can help the platform gain traction on a wider scale.

First, SmoothShop requires less hardware than Amazon Go, making it more affordable (and less of a headache) for SMBs to deploy.

Second, the speed of receipt delivery creates peace of mind almost as soon as the customer leaves the store. Amazon Go can take longer to deliver a receipt, which Hirpara feels can leave the customer anxious about whether he was charged the right amount.

Third and finally, every retailer is different, so each one will need to tailor its checkout-free experience to suit its brands and what it knows about its customer base. Hirpara said that’s why a DIY approach is beneficial. It enables retailers to pick and choose the parts they need and grow the system with them.

For some retailers, waiting in line may not be the biggest point of friction. Or, perhaps what’s needed is more of an in-store enhancement by which customers could tap products with their phone to learn more and share those products with friends.

Any solution that hopes to succeed must fine-tune itself to the nitty gritty of individual businesses, Hirpara said. Retailers must take the time to understand their unique frictions and customer journeys. Only then can they decide which solution is right for them.

How AVA retail Wants to Give Amazon Go a Run for its Money

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AVA retail wants you to know that Amazon Go isn’t the only seamless checkout experience in town.

Though Amazon Go has been grabbing all the headlines, AVA retail—an Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence-driven retail solutions company—has been quietly working on its own cashier-less checkout experience and formally launched as a multi-solutions company at Shoptalk this week.

Some of the panic over the so-called “retail apocalypse” is prompting many retailers to invest in brick-and-mortar digital transformations, which Grandview Research estimates could drive annual expenditures of $20 billion.

AVA retail brings together top players in tech and fintech, including Microsoft Azure IoT and Mastercard, from which it’s leveraging cashierless technology. According to the company’s CEO, AVA retail wants to bring a more data-driven, consumer-friendly approach to the in-store shopping journey.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Why can’t a retailer better understand shoppers as they travel through the store and interact with products? Why can’t they track dwell time and paths? Why can’t they deliver insights and predictions in real time?’” Atul Hirpara, AVA retail CEO, said.

“With AVA retail they can leverage IoT sensors to digitally transform physical retail locations, creating digital footprints of in-store shoppers, store associates and store inventory that was not available before. AVA retail then converts this data into insights through its Analytics dashboard, empowering retailers and CPG companies to create better shopper experiences, drive staffing efficiency, and higher sales conversion,” Hirpara added. “Taking our AVA Experiences to the next level of truly frictionless shopping was not a huge step for us.”

AVA offers three products: AVA Analytics, which helps retailer conduct A/B testing, generate heat map, perform funnel analysis and more; AVA Experiences, itself a product portfolio comprising mobile apps, smart shelving and displays; and AVA SmoothShop, the cashier-less checkout experience.

According to AVA retail, consumers don’t need a special app or to walk through a turnstile upon entering to shop in a participating SmoothShop store, although retailers can chose those options if they prefer. AVA retail’s solution employ a SaaS model to keep costs affordable for retailers, and the SmoothShop experience relies on computer vision, sensor fusion, machine learning and artificial intelligence to create the seamless customer checkout. Upon completing their transaction, shoppers immediately receive a receipt so they can keep tabs on how much they’ve spent.

In partnering with companies including a major coffee chain, office supply store, superstore and others, AVA retail has tallied in excess of 30 million customer journeys, more than 750 million product interactions at the shelf level, and greater than 20 million checkouts cross four continents.

8 Ways to Add Tech to the Retail Experience

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I was recently invited to Microsoft’s campus to see the cool things they have been up to and one of the highlights was visiting the Microsoft Retail Experience Center. This was an on-premise environment that replicated various retailers and showcased cool technologies that retailers – big and small – could use to amp-up their business, supported by Azure.

Some of the highlights:

● NFC-enabled coaster that by putting it down on your table could enable your server to know that you needed another beer.

● Opt-in beacon technology that allows you to place your coffee order as you near the coffee shop and have it ready and waiting for you when you arrive.

● Digital projection onto the counter, allowing the barista to place your cup in a specifically labeled virtual circle so you know which coffee is yours, no scribble-interpreting needed.

● Opt-in tech that lets retailers track existing customers that are part of their loyalty program in the store, so they know what to recommend and upsell them, based on their location and purchase history.

● Video screens with FaceCake software that let you try on makeup, clothing and accessories “virtually,” see what you look like and even view side-by-side comparisons of different looks right at the point of purchase.

● Tablets that dock for security (so they don’t walk out the door) but disconnect so that sales associates can demonstrate product features to the customers in the store.

● Vending machines, enabled with both interactive information about the product (like nutritional information) and a camera that scans you, analyzes data and tailors suggestions based on demographic information.

● RFID tags on clothing that project information onto your fitting-room screening wall and also allow you to instantly request a new size or other assistance from a sales associate. This is great not just for customer service, but it can feed information to the associate on complementary pieces to bring to the dressing room for an “upsell.”

There were many more examples, but that’s just some of the creative ways retailers will be using technology, many that could add significant ROI to a retail business.

I will say one other thing that stood out, is that using the Azure platform in the cloud gives companies full control over their own data. This means that the very robust and valuable customer behavioral and related data that you, as a retailer, collect from implementing new technologies is fully owned and controlled by you, and not shared with Microsoft. This is very different from other cloud providers, who, as part of their services agreement, have access to the aggregated data that you collect while using their platforms – something that you should seriously consider before you pick a cloud-services provider.

If you are a retailer or aspiring retailer that wants to implement technologies, there are a bevy of partners that can help you to think through and implement the new technologies in your location. Some of the ones highlighted at the Retail Experience Center included Ava Retail and Swivel.

As a customer as well as a customer loyalty and experience strategist, I look forward to seeing entrepreneurs implement these technologies and variations on them to improve the customer experience – and their own business success.

Retail IoT: AI firm trials autonomous smartphone checkouts

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American artificial intelligence (AI) firm AVA Retail has successfully completed the first trial of its autonomous checkout system.

The SmoothShop system allows customers to scan and pay for items with their smartphones in retail aisles. On finishing, the amounts owed by shoppers are deducted from their connected accounts with a click.

The technology is targeted at high-street retailers and smaller merchants.

● Frictionless shopping

SmoothShop is designed to be a quick and convenient system for both customers and retailers. The checkout doesn’t rely on a third-party app or turnstile – AVA said “shoppers simply enter the store with their phone”.

However, the company explained that it does offer additional software and hardware for stores that want to take extra security precautions. The system is powered by “deep learning, computer vision, and sensor fusion technologies”, added the firm.

The news comes just days after UK supermarket chain Co-Op unveiled its own smartphone-based checkout service to slash queuing times.

AVA announced its frictionless checkout system in August 2016, but didn’t start trialling the technology until September 2017. Since then, it has been testing it in co-working space/start-up community WeWork’s food and beverage kiosks.

AVA has collaborated with Mastercard to bring the latter’s digital payment and security services to AVA’s cashier technology. Mastercard is on a mission to “provide comprehensive solutions for retailers across multiple categories”, explained AVA.

In the UK, the Co-op’s app is also built on Mastercard’s Masterpass secure mobile payments technology.

Stephane Wyper, senior vice president of new commerce partnerships at Mastercard, said, “Mastercard continues to engage with innovative companies that are developing technologies that can transform the in-store retail experience to make the consumer journey as frictionless as possible.

“This collaboration is a great example of how we can couple our rich set of payment, security, and analytic capabilities with AVA’s retail IoT assets to help retailers deploy unique experiences today,” he said.

● Transforming retail

As Wyper suggested, AVA has also developed an analytics solution in partnership with Mastercard, to help retailers gain better insight into their customers’ needs and behaviours.

So far, AVA claims to have processed more than 30 million customer journeys, 750 million product interactions, and 20 million checkouts throughout four continents.

Atul Hirpara, chief executive officer of AVA, explained that firm is helping stores accelerate their digital transformation plans and tap into emerging technologies.

“[Retailers are using] IoT sensors to digitally transform physical retail locations, creating digital footprints of in-store shoppers, store associates, and store inventory that was not available before,” he said.

By tapping into IoT data, retailers can “create better shopper experiences, drive staffing efficiency, and higher sales conversion”, he added.

● Internet of Business says

Mastercard’s strategy to provide the underlying technology for frictionless shopping is becoming clear, and we can expect more announcements in this space in the months ahead. The tipping point will come when the biggest retailers get onboard with smartphone shopping, with many having already deployed automated self-checkouts.

As we reported in our story on the Co-op’s similar programme, frictionless shopping has become critically important to rising numbers of customers. Many use their smartphones for shopping lists, while others compare goods online along with in-store prices from other retailers in the aisles.

Now both consumers and retailers want in-store shopping to be as swift and hassle-free as ordering goods online, but with the added benefit of bricks rather than clicks: instant access to goods.

The result could be greater loyalty to the brands that deploy these technologies – the Holy Grail for all retailers, especially in the squeezed mid-market – and a more efficiently run business.

However, not all retail environments will be appropriate for the instant gratification approach: it will be a ‘horses for courses’ market, with many shops – particularly in higher-end goods and fashion – differentiating themselves by their quality of personal service, as well as their goods.

In the UK, the Co-op has said that it has seen the use of cash in its food stores diminish rapidly as alternative payment methods have become more popular. Cash transactions have fallen by more than one fifth over the last five years, and by 15 percent in the past 18 months alone, it said.

Doubtless competitors will be watching to see how secure this new system is, what the impacts are on shopper numbers, supply chain/ordering processes, and the bottom line – and whether the system is used or abused.

Automating Retail Through "Frictionless" Checkout

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According to a recent study, retailers are expected to invest more than $20 billion per year in the digital transformation of the industry. For consumers, one of the most visible aspects of this transformation will be the growth of cashierless checkout. A newly-formed company, AVA retail, is poised at the forefront of this trend.

AVA refers to the experience as “frictionless” checkout. This isn’t just the self-serve lane at the grocery store we’re talking about; AVA retail deploys internet of things (IoT) sensors within physical retail locations in order to create digital footprints of in-store shoppers, store associates and store inventory. The data is then converted into analytics in order to drive better shopping experiences, maximize staffing efficiency and push for a higher sales conversion rate.

While hardware optimized with AI, deep learning, computer vision and sensor fusion underpins the technology, the frictionless checkout experience is far simpler from a customer point-of-view. Shoppers simply need to enter a store with a phone; there’s no app that needs to be opened. Creating a "pick-and-go" experience for food shopping is a particular focus for AVA; the technology can be used for just about any type of snack bar or quick-serve restaurant that might otherwise be closed during odd hours.

AVA’s product suite for brick-and-mortar retailers also includes “smart” shelves, displays and mobile apps offering personalized promotional content to shoppers.

How Amazon Go went from press release to a real live store

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Machine learning, computer vision and people are the secret sauce making Amazon Go go, executives said during a keynote at ShopTalk Sunday.

It took Amazon several years to develop the technology that lets shoppers simply grab goods and walk away, with payment made automatically through the app. But in typical Amazon fashion, the entire concept began with a finished idea and a mission to reverse engineer the underlying technology to make it happen. "We wrote the press release first and then started building the product," said Gianna Puerini, vice president of Amazon Go. "We had to figure out how to do it."

The technology challenges were many, but boiled down to three, according to Dilip Kumar, vice president of technology at Amazon Go and Amazon Books. First, was to execute the concept in a way that seemed effortless to the customer, where the technology simply fades into the background. "To do this in a seamless way is a lot harder than it seems," he told attendees.

Second, "We decided we wanted to do this using computer vision and machine learning," he said. "To do this we had to invent many algorithms to solve this problem of who took what in a grocery store setting." The technology uses multiple cameras to identify products and shoppers in a crowded place, to a level of specificity that will identify items, down to the flavor of jam.

RFID was not the solution, putting tags on individual items was not the solution. Creating a robust hardware and software solution that worked together was.

One of the biggest challenges, according to Puerini, was simply the art of retailing, in the classic sense. "The more traditional aspects of retail are the ones I spend the most time on during the day," she told the packed auditorium in the Sands Convention Center. "The challenges are a lot like those for most in this room." In particular, to provide a compelling assortment that customers will like, at a good price and in a convenient setting.

Among the most popular items at Amazon Go are the prepared meal kits created to serve dinner for two in 30 minutes, said Puerini. Developing, sourcing and replenishing these are the kinds of blocking and tackling that retailers everywhere face, and Amazon Go is no different, cutting-edge technology and all.

In spite of the technology, the human element is an important component in Amazon Go. Eliminating the checkout got rid of a major pain point for shoppers, but "physical shopping is fantastic, just not the checkout," Puerini said. "We want to put our resources behind the things that add value — the human team."

"It takes a lot more than just being able to walk out to make a store," said Kumar.

Store associates are readily available throughout the concept, with one or two regularly in place at the exit. Assuring customers that they can indeed, just put items in a bag and leave, is a regular occurrence according to Puerini. It's one they expect will become less frequent as shoppers become more accustomed to the process.

Amazon Go may the hottest retail concept of the year, or the last several years, but it's not the only frictionless shopping solution on the rise. Startups are developing and announcing similar technologies that promise to help retailers stay abreast of this trend. Retail Dive got a demonstration from one such startup, Ava Retail, in a neighboring suite during ShopTalk, and similar pitches are coming in fast.

There are also applications beyond the convenience store concept. Quick serve restaurants are prime candidates — imagine going into a Starbucks to pick up a mobile order, adding a juice or other items from the grab and go case and simply walking out. Not only is the line avoided, which was the point of using the mobile ordering feature, but the store gets the add-on sales that are currently being missed in these more targeted purchases.

Similarly in a hotel where snacks and beverages are often displayed on open shelves, like a pantry. Today these need to be brought to the check-in desk and added to the room bill. But by adding cameras and sensors, and linking the room key which is attached to a credit card on file, that stop at the counter becomes unnecessary.

Transit centers, too, are ripe for these applications. Commuters can quickly grab an item from a kiosk and jump on a train. Cameras track the movement and payments are tied to the auto-replenishment program of the cardholder.

Retailers that are not Amazon are seriously looking at elements of Amazon Go's frictionless checkout, or "walk-out" technology, Ava Retail Founder and CEO Atul Hirpara told Retail Dive. And while Amazon Go packs a lot of hardware, there are solutions that use scaled down versions, making it less expensive to trial and implement.

Amazon itself is not actively marketing or implementing the technology, making it available to other retailers or brands. Nor are there any plans to roll the technology out to Whole Foods Markets, said Puerini.