Amazon Go and other ‘invisible payment’ technologies, aimed at reducing or removing physical checkouts from the retail experience, will process over $78 billion in transactions by 2022, up from an expected $9.8 billion this year, a new study from Juniper Research (www.juniperresearch.com) has found.

These deployments, in single figures today, will reach over 5,000 retail outlets over the next five years as retailers seek to make consumer experiences frictionless and more engaging, the research group adds. Meanwhile, the number of consumers using checkout apps, which allows them to scan their own shopping, will grow from just under 4 million to over 30 million in the same period.

Juniper Research found that the cost and complexity of infrastructure integration will constrain deployments of invisible payments systems in the short term. It argues that initially, the majority of revenues from new retail technologies would be derived from two elements: checkout apps and automatic scanning.

These have lower upfront costs than setups like Amazon Go or Panasonic’s robotic checkout, and can be used as information and promotion platforms, which increases overall spending. Juniper Research estimates that these technologies will drive an average increase in revenue of over $300 per shopper per annum by 2022.

The research argues that a collection of new technologies, from mobile point of sale to automated inventory checking, is transforming the role of retail staff from cashier to advisor, allowing them to provide a more mobile and personal service.The research argues that a collection of new technologies, from mobile point of sale to automated inventory checking, is transforming the role of retail staff from cashier to advisor, allowing them to provide a more mobile and personal service.

“Retail technologies are all moving to make in-store retail more experience-focused,” remarked research author James Moar. “This is ideal for online-first retailers as the store functions as an advert for an existing business. Offline-first retailers need to both have more personalized experiences and maintain the same transaction volume; a far harder task.”