Walmart Expanding iPhone Checkout System to More Stores and Android

Walmart’s iPhone-based Scan & Go self-checkout pilot program appears to be going pretty well. Well enough that the retailer is significantly expanding it.

Scan & Go, which allows shoppers to scan an item’s bar code with their iPhone and then pay for it at a Walmart self-checkout station, is currently available in about 70 stores. In the coming months, the retailer will roll it out to some 130 more, expanding it to more than 200 stores.

That’s about triple the number the pilot program began with, though still only a fraction of Walmart’s more than 4,000 U.S. locations. But evidently the big-box retailer sees a lot of promise in this app-based checkout system. Walmart figures that about 50 percent of its shoppers use smartphones, and it has determined that about half the customers who have shopped with Scan & Go have done so more than once.

And that’s reason enough for the company to further expand it. Walmart is in the process of adding self-checkout lanes to another 1,000 or so stores this year. Expanding the Scan & Go pilot in concert with that effort makes a lot of sense, as does bolstering it with an Android version of the app. And that, too, is in the works.