Dollar General is testing Amazon-style tech that lets customers leave without checking out

Dollar General is testing cashierless checkout technology at a store in North Carolina.
The store functions similar to venues that use Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
Cashierless stores have yet to roll out widely, and Amazon has even closed some of its Go stores.

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The US’s largest dollar store chain is experimenting with Amazon-like cashierless technology, the company confirmed to Insider.

Customers at a Dollar General store in Banner Elk, North Carolina, don’t have to stand in line or deal with a self-checkout kiosk at the end of their visit. Instead, they can simply walk out with their purchases. 

The experience at this Dollar General seems reminiscent of Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which the e-commerce giant debuted several years ago in its Amazon Go convenience stores. Dollar General, though, is working with AiFi, a startup that has developed its own technology and partners with retailers. Both systems utilize dozens of cameras to monitor what a shopper picks up and, ultimately, charge shoppers for what they remove from a store.

“Consistent with our ongoing strategy to continually look for new ways to meet our customers’ value and convenience needs, we recently piloted a store with frictionless technology,” Dollar General told Insider. “While we do not currently plan to expand this technology, we instead will continue to test and learn.”

AiFi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

A TikTok video posted last October shows a customer shopping at the Banner Elk store. Before entering, the customer inserts a credit card into a kiosk and requests a receipt for purchases on a touchscreen. A worker then opens the door to let the customer into the store, though the customer says the store plans to install a door that will automatically open.

“It has everything you could possibly want,” the customer says in the video as she pans around to show shelves full of cereal, bread, soft drinks, and other shelf-stable groceries. “It does not sell alcohol, because there isn’t a cashier on-site that could validate your ID,” she adds.

The customer leaves the store with several packages of candy, then shows a screenshot of a receipt that was texted to her smartphone.

Amazon has spent the last few years rolling out its Just Walk Out technology through Amazon Go stores and at a Whole Foods store in Washington, DC. But recently, it has shuttered some Amazon Go stores in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.

In February, AiFi said its technology was in use at just over 100 stores. Other retailers that have worked with the startup include Aldi, which added AiFi’s tech to a UK grocery store, and French retailer Carrefour. 

Amazon opened the first Amazon Go store to the public in 2018. Afterward, startups like AiFi promoted their technology to retailers who wanted to compete with Amazon on cashierless checkout. The startups said their camera and computer-vision systems would save customers time at checkout and allow retailers to put stores in areas where they couldn’t hire employees. Dollar General has faced labor shortages. 

But the technology hasn’t become widespread since then, Frank Beard, a retail analyst who works in the convenience store industry, told Insider. “If you look at the total store count for autonomous checkout stores, it’s really been a slow trickle rather than this autonomous retail revolution,” Beard said.

The technology can be used for a variety of purposes, such as monitoring which products need to be re-stocked on shelves. But many retailers are just using it to make checking out faster, Beard said.

“If you want to do that, you can just install self-checkout,” he added.

Do you work or shop at a Dollar Tree store or have a story to share? Reach out to Alex Bitter at [email protected] or via the encrypted messaging app Signal at (808) 854-4501.

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