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Your next Costco run might just be a few minutes quicker.
Costco CEO Ron Vachris hinted at several tech improvements the wholesale club is rolling out in an effort to speed up checkout at warehouses.
“We found that digital really enhances the speed of checkout, and so we are really working hard on the digital membership card usage,” he said during the company’s third quarter earnings call Thursday.
“We’ve also engaged in some scan-and-go, done by Costco,” he added, borrowing a phrase that sounds an awful lot like a phrase that is trademarked by Walmart for Sam’s Club.
Vachris did not go into detail about the process, but a section of Costco’s Same-Day website outlines a method called Scan & Pay as a feature of the company’s partnership with Instacart.
According to the guide, certain stores include a QR code near the entrance that warehouse shoppers can scan to use the service.
From there, shoppers can use their smartphone camera to scan barcodes and ring up their orders in the app, which brings up a QR code they can present to a scanner at the exit to confirm their purchase.
Shoppers on social media have clamored for Costco to introduce a similar feature, and the wholesale club is behind rival Sam’s Club in rolling out new tech for members.
The Walmart-owned warehouse chain has leaned hard into speeding up the shopping experience for members and even deleted the traditional checkout lanes from its new location in Grapevine, Texas.
Such tech improvements have given Sam’s Club a significant lift in customer satisfaction ratings, vaulting it over long-time top-dog Costco earlier this year.
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