SÃO PAULO – French multinational Carrefour, an operator of retail and grocery stores in Brazil, announced this week the launch of its first two autonomous neighborhood markets.
The convenience stores will operate without humans at checkout counters and without customer service, a model that goes a step beyond Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology which runs partially automated stores in some US and UK cities.
The Brazilian stores do not have employees to assist with purchases nor automatic cashiers. Instead, clients use an app to enter the stores and customers pay as if on an e-commerce website and receive a code to leave the store.
The stores have been operating since mid-December, but have just now been announced, according to the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo.
By Milan Sime Martinic