The main usage I see is mainly self checkout.
Please note that I'm biased towards dense areas. We have on-the-go scanning in super stores as well, I feel it's not being used but I could be wrong
Which part of France are you in? Where I am, Paris suburbs, I see it used all the time in Carrefour.
There is a learning curve, which I think inhibits wider usage. I used it a couple of times, and every time I forgot to scan stuff, or forgot whether I scanned stuff, and had to go over the last scans to check.
The frustrating thing is that stores have fewer cashiers, so there's always a line. But often that line is shorter than the one for self-checkout.
its empty because it’s considered rude to burden the poorly paid checkout person when you can self-service. Once all of the self-service lanes are occupied, the sentiment shifts and customers uneasily queue up in the manned lane, frantically watching if the self-service lane clears up so they can jump out of the manned lane.
One of those freak cases in behavioral econ where the causality is very straightforward and explicit.
In my own shopping, I just use whatever seems likely to be fastest or less hassle -- for me.
If I've got a bunch of stuff, I'm heading to the cashier because they're better-equipped to handle a volume of stuff than I am at self-checkout.
But if it's just a couple of small items, then the self-checkout seems fastest: Scan, plonk, scan, plonk, invoke the incantation so that it can take my money[1], and pay it.
(Unless one of those small items involves something like beer or something else requiring an ID check, wherein: It's back to the cashier.)
[1]: In my neck of the woods, Wal-Mart gets this best, with as few as one button-pushes required to pay and leave (and there was a time when it was zero button pushes to use a debit card at self-checkout there). Dollar General gets it worst, requiring at least 8 button pushes (with three different input methods! it requires input on two different touchscreens and one physical keypad) to pay them and get on my way.
It is?? I missed that memo. But in my part of the US, the manned cashiers always have a line for them, too.
Big chains plan to gamblify the prices in the next few years using their "member cards" points, some chains are already up to this with specific penetration targets before they move forward. And this is not insider knowledge they're upfront about it.
For one thing I think these things take years for broad acceptance and for another the current scanners with their bright and large displays are just what was needed to make it attractive for the young and elderly.
Give a retailer a large display, and they will fill it with ads, with the important info in tiny type. Or even a small display. I've seen user-facing credit card terminals where the small screen is 3/4 ads, 1/4 transaction.
If they'd just put up "Place card against screen here" marker that was 1) where the antenna is, and 2) fully synchronized with when the system is ready for a card read...
Why not? what makes it unpopular?
And then if you are unlucky you hit a random "let's recheck everything" at the cashier which nullifies all the work that you have done.
The fact that you have to remember to scan every time you put anything in your basket is just worse for the mental load I find.
Don't forget to mention that with the manned checkout dishwasher, it's fast and powerful but you're stuck standing there until it's done.