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Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

A few cents. Still much more expensive than printing a barcode on the side of an item but can pay for itself through better inventory tracking.

See WalMart's use of RFID for some examples of how RFID is already used in the way you ask about. http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?7753

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Unfortunately to achieve the 'holy grail' of being able to scan every item in a customer's basket would need a one cent tag on a thirty cent can of beans - which just doesn't sound economically feasible.

And that's assuming you can get a tag that will read reliably when stuck to the opposite side of a metal can for that price.

Parent's "a few cents" and what I pay in SoCal for a can of beans ($1.40 regular price; $0.99 on sale) indicate a different scope.

You project a 1:3 ratio. Cheaper estimates of chip cost, more expensive beans suggest the other end of that ratio is $0.03:1.40 indicate the chip cost around 2%, which could potentially be recouped by better inventory practices.

I don't dispute you can spend $1.40 on a can of beans if you're buying premium brand, but in Asda (a British supermarket chain brought by Wal-Mart a few years ago) I can buy a can of "SmartPrice Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce" [1] for £0.24 (about 33 cents) and a can of "SmartPrice Mushy Peas" [2] for £0.16 (about 22 cents), and a can of "SmartPrice New Potatoes in Water" [3] for £0.15 (about 21 cents).

If you can get those goods onto shelves profitably and spare a cent for an RFID tag, you could have a successful career in grocery retailing :)

[1] https://groceries.asda.com/product/baked-beans/asda-smartpri... [2] https://groceries.asda.com/product/peas/mushy-peas/34117 [3] https://groceries.asda.com/product/potatoes-instant-mash/asd...

I remember a Walmart IT manager spoke to my IT Senior Seminar class in 08, and said that they were RFID to the pallet level and were working to go down to the carton/case level. I have no idea where they are at now.

Reliable UHF RFID when tags are on metal or liquid surfaces is a solved problem. See Omni-ID's tags for an example, albeit not for only a few cents, as the metal makes good RF performance a little more challenging http://www.omni-id.com/on-metal-rfid/

A store like CostCo that probably has a $5 minimum item price could be a good market for it.

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