Akihabara News (Tokyo) — Fujitsu has made a big move into emerging checkout-free retail store industry by signing a deal to become the exclusive distributor of Zippin’s checkout-free technologies in Japan.
The agreement was concluded after a successful field trial that Fujitsu and Zippin conducted with the cooperation of the Lawson convenience store chain earlier this year.
San Francisco-based Zippin has been developing a platform that tracks shoppers from directly overhead with cameras, combined with data from shelf sensors, to try to ensure the highest level of purchase accuracy even in crowded stores. This can allow shoppers to avoid checkout lines, simply walking out of the store and confirming that their purchases were recorded accurately on their smartphones.
Fujitsu has now become Zippin’s first exclusive distributor in any market, and it may integrate its own multi-biometric authentication systems for the Japanese market.
Hirohisa Yamaguchi, corporate executive officer and head of Finance & Retail Solution Business Group at Fujitsu, commented, “We will continue to proactively partner with best-in-class startup companies in order to accelerate digital transformation for not only Japan but for global retail industry.”
Retail customers in Japan may be having their first direct experiences with this Fujitsu-Zippin style of checkout-free markets by about September 2021. This business model is expected to spread rapidly through the coming decade.