Yes, they've been using this in Spain for a while in all Apple Stores. There are a few things that make it "not awesome". For example, an employee always had to review my purchases (I wasn't buying anything expensive, less than €100), and one time there was an issue with the payment and it required the intervention of one of the employees as well. But I agree, once it's a "take item, scan it, walk out" and it works flawlessly, it can be a game changer if they apply it to other retail shops.

In the UK, you really can walk in, pick something up, pay on your phone and walk out. No staff intervention necessary.

Granted, all the really high value stuff is out back so perhaps this doesn't scale as well to other retailers.

Yea but how is this fundamentally different from the millions of self-check out aisles at grocery stores around the world? I mean, yes, you use your own phone, fire up an app, scan the item and use your stored credit card. But a self-check out kiosk works similar enough. Scan item and use your own credit card by swiping it.

All the self-service aisle kiosks I've used are horrible machines that scream at you for tiny deviations.

Their UX reminds me of the Onion's video: "Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport":

http://www.theonion.com/video/pragues-franz-kafka-internatio...

I don't understand what's so difficult to use about self-checkout. Once you've used them once or twice, you know how to use them at pretty much any store. I always prefer self-checkout to going up to a cashier. Cashiers are always so slow and take their time. I can get done extremely quickly if I use self-checkout though.

True true!

> If they enable this for other merchants, it would be a huge business.

If they can convince people it doesn't feel like stealing. And I think people are somewhat right to worry... if you screw up the purchase, it's shoplifting. If I go to a clerk, and they screw up, not my problem.