Amazon ‘Just Walk Out’ shopping makes college debut
For the first time, Amazon “Just Walk Out” cashierless shopping technology is available in a store on a college campus.
In an email to Chain Store Age, Amazon announced that an on-campus convenience store located in the lobby of Gerard Phelan Hall at Marymount University in Arlington, Va. (the city where Amazon is building a second headquarters). The store, Saints 24, includes food options featuring freshly prepared sandwiches, wraps, salads, sushi, yogurt and ice cream; as well as other items such as toiletries and feminine hygiene products.
To shop using Just Walk Out frictionless technology, customers can enter the store with a dip of their credit card at the entry gates, select their desired items, and leave without going through a checkout line or self-serve kiosk. Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology detects what shoppers take from or return to the shelves using sensor fusion, computer vision, and deep learning. The credit card the customer inserted is charged for the items they took after they leave the store.
“Marymount is committed to providing students with new and exciting on-campus experiences that cater to their needs, and we’re proud to collaborate on their first checkout-free store,” said Dilip Kumar, VP of AWS Applications. “Now, students and guests can grab food, beverages and other essentials in a way that is easy and convenient for them.”
“Becoming the first university in the U.S. to collaborate with Amazon in incorporating its Just Walk Out technology at an on-campus convenience shop demonstrates how Marymount is leading the way in fostering an innovative and exciting student experience that appeals to the tech-savvy college students of today,” said Dr. Irma Becerra, president of Marymount University.
Amazon extends availability of Just Walk Out
While Amazon initially launched Just Walk Out for use in its own brick-and-mortar store banners, such as Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market, the company has since licensed it for use in a variety of third-party locations.
Other settings that have seen multiple deployments of Just Walk Out-enabled stores not operated by Amazon include airports and sports and live entertainment facilities. Amazon also offers Just Walk Out functionality at stores located in its own Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
In addition, in a separate initiative, Amazon is teaming up with mobile credential and payment solutions provider Transact to integrate its Just Walk Out frictionless technology with Transact's solutions across college campuses.
The two companies expect that stores powered by the Amazon technology will be deployed across campuses via an integrated solution combining Transact’s card system for payments, mobile ordering app for store entry, and Cloud POS for product catalogs, inventory and reporting.