Ikea and Kaufland recently introduced new payment methods in their branches. Now there is also a change at the drugstore chain Dm. A new type of payment that does not require any cash at all is currently being tested in various markets.
At around 100 locations throughout Germany, dm plans to introduce so-called self-service checkouts this year. With this type of billing, the stores get by with fewer cashiers because customers scan their products themselves. This type of payment is not new, it can already be found in various supermarkets, hardware stores and similar shops.
Drugstore chain DM starts self-checkouts in the first branches
As the “Lebensmittel Zeitung” reports, a trial operation is currently running in nine branches. With him, Dm would like to find out how well the self-checkouts are accepted by customers. According to Stephan Seitz from the IT subsidiary dmTech, customers of the drugstore chain in particular have paid for smaller purchases via the self-checkouts. The self-checkout should be available in about 100 branches throughout Germany before the end of this year.
When choosing the self-checkouts, Dm deliberately opted for a simple model. It does not have built-in scales, which are often found in self-service checkouts in supermarkets. The checkweighers can be used to check whether customers really scan all the products and thus bill them. However, this is not necessary in a drugstore.
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No cash payment possible
The self-checkouts are a good way to quickly pay for smaller purchases yourself and to avoid the possibly full checkouts with employees. However, the self-service checkouts at Dm have a catch: they do not allow cash payments. Instead, customers can only pay by debit card, credit card or, in the future, Payback Pay.
The reason for this is easy to explain: the self-service checkouts do not require a cashier and therefore do not require a traditional cash register. Depositing money and giving out change is therefore not possible. Other self-checkouts, for example at Ikea, Kaufland or Obi, work according to the same principle, so users should already be used to this type of payment. And as long as the classic checkout with a cashier doesn’t disappear, users also have the choice of where they want to bill and pay for their purchase.