The rising adoption of contactless payment procedures is one to the key factors fuelling the surge in the demand for self-checkout systems across the world. Contactless payment processes are increasingly being conducted with the help of smartphone-enable payment options and near-filed communication (NFC) technology. This concept allows the shoppers to use their smartphones for scanning the items that they want to buy at a service point-of-sale (POS) terminal. These systems allow the customers to make payments without being in direct contact with the payment machine, which in turn, drastically reduces the time taken for payment.
The other major factor pushing the demand for self-checkout systems is the lower labor requirement of these machines for their operation. Many companies are increasingly adopting self-checkout systems in their stores on account of the fact that these systems reduce the labor costs. Moreover, multiple self-checkout systems can be easily operated by one person and this allows the stores to deploy their staff to the sales floor and assist customers with their shopping, thereby enhancing the overall customer experience.
The biggest trend presently being witnessed in the self-checkout system market is the increasing focus of self-checkout system providers on solutions that can be incorporated with the latest technological innovations such as near-field communication (NFC), smartphones, and radio frequency identification (RFID). A RFID reader captures the identification number of each item, which helps the self-checkout system in reading the product labels. The adoption of convertible self-checkout systems is another important trend currently observed in the market. These systems provide both assisted and self-checkout options.
Across the world, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region registered the fastest growth in the utilization of self-checkout systems over the last few years and this trend is predicted to continue during the forecast period as well. This is mainly attributed to the fact that in the various APAC countries such as India, Japan, and China, the store owners are increasingly incorporating the use of advanced technologies such as self-checkout systems in order to reduce labor requirement and enable faster human-free checkouts.
Therefore, it is certain that the demand for self-checkout systems will boom in the coming years, due to the growing adoption of automated technologies in store operations and the rising popularity of contactless payment processes.
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