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TOKYO — Convenience store operator Seven-Eleven Japan will start offering a smartphone app that allows customers to scan the prices of products and make electronic payments, Nikkei has learned.
Its group company is already offering the service in 3,000 stores in the U.S. and the Japanese chain now hopes to make the app available at its directly managed stores in Tokyo and Osaka by next spring. After that, it will expand the service to franchise stores.
Customers will no longer have to wait in lines to pay but can scan items with their phone cameras and make online payments. Stores will be able to increase productivity by allowing employees to focus on new services like deliveries.
With this move, the company is accelerating its digital shift, particularly at a time when it is facing difficulties in finding physical space to increase store count. With the COVID pandemic, there has also been a shift toward online purchases and the new app allows more physical distancing.
Customers will have to scan a QR code to enter and leave stores, though, as Seven-Eleven wants to keep track of numbers. Also, customers who want to buy products that require age verification, such as alcohol and cigarettes, and to pay utility bills will still have to do so at cash registers.
Seven-Eleven expects the app to drastically reduce the need for cash registers, which account for about 30% of overall store operations. Each store will also be able to reduce staff by one or two.
The chain hopes to focus employees in other operations, such as home deliveries. Seven-Eleven aims to offer a delivery service to almost all of its 21,000 stores in Japan by fiscal 2025. Reducing the need to operate cash registers will allow workers to focus on tasks like bagging ordered items and handing them over to couriers.
In the U.S., the company plans to expand the app to up to 8,000 stores by the end of fiscal 2022. Its experience in the U.S. will also provide Japanese stores with more know-how to build a system.
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