Doesn’t really matter though. The next gen tech is coming soon. You won’t have to scan anymore and theft will be next to impossible.
Self-checkout seems to be the happy middle ground where the lost turnover/angry number of customers is reasonable enough for it to be possible.
People really don't like "computer says no" when their money is involved and that's the barrier you need to clear before auto-checkout is a thing.
This sounds like some tech utopia t thinking. What's gonna stop someone just grabbing something and walking out? The employees?
In theory there is an standardized mapping of the whole GS1 labeling system onto UHF RFID and the only thing that prevents universal deployment is some kind of critical mass. Somewhat surprisingly the standards even take into account the privacy issues inherent in that and the tags do not have fixed physical address (unlike HF RFID/NFC with 1wire-style deconflicting UIDs) and the contents can be progressively masked out, with command to completely disable the tag being mandatory.
On the other hand, first demonstration of that I can remember was by Siemens in 1991, so there is probably another 30 years to go for that to become widespread :)
Although it sounds a bit too much for a store, technically it could be done.
- Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Most of their items has this tag inside the regular tags, I guess this would be much harder to implement in a regular store.
Also very uneconomical. RFID tags have a cost, while printing a barcode on a package that is anyway printed is totally free. Unless there's a clear economical advantage that compensates for the lost revenue, this is a no-go for less expensive items like what you find in a grocery store.