Amazon making the invisible credit card a reality
Just yesterday we posted details from a BBC story about the “invisible credit card” — the ability to grab and go from stores and charge them to your card.
Amazon is making that dream a reality — currently testing its own Amazon Go stores in Seattle. Currently available to employees only, the concept store will open to the public in January.
From our thematic perspective, the clear focus is on the Cashless Consumption theme and all things that make this type of technology work. Remember, one of our key strategies in assessing investment opportunities that our thematic lens brings into focus is “buy the bullets not the gun.” The gun in purchased once, but you always need more bullets and those can be used in any gun.
But other themes are bubbling up too around this story — why one of our darlings of the Connected Society theme and the eTailer giant of the world seems so focused on creating bricks & mortar locations? (Remember, Amazon is currently opening physical bookstores around the country.
Then, of course, there is a bit of the Foods with Integrity theme bumbling around here as well — something we are tackling in this week’s Tematica Investing issue for subscribers and how consumers’ desire for more “whole”, natural, and nutritionally rich foods are being fulfilled by the on-demand food services like Blue Apron and the like.
And lastly, we think about the Safety and Security angle — how is the massive amounts of data Amazon will be collecting here kept safe? And what happens if someone has their phone stolen — how much damage could someone ring up (pun intended) on a credit card in just a few minutes?
We currently have boots on the ground in Seattle ready to document their experience at the Amazon store. We will be sure to share as soon as it opens.
Amazon is testing a grocery store in downtown Seattle that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever having to stand in a checkout line.Customers tap their cellphones on a turnstile as they walk into the store, which logs them into the store’s network and connects to their Amazon Prime account through an app.The service is called Amazon Go. It uses machine learning, sensors and artificial intelligence to track items customers pick up. These are then added to the virtual cart on their app. If they pick up an item they later decide they don’t want, putting it back on the shelf removes it from their cart.
Source: Amazon just opened a grocery store without a checkout line
