Costco touts success of card scanner rollout; speeds up checkout process

Costco is already reaping the benefits after recently introducing membership card scanners at the front of warehouses in its U.S. stores, and the move is being well-received by customers, the wholesale club said Friday.

During the retailer's fourth quarter earnings call, Costco CEO Ron Vachris noted that the company has used card readers at the front of its stores in Europe for more than two years now and has been piloting the system in the U.S. for roughly six months.

He pointed to several ways the scanners help Costco improve operational efficiency at stores.

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"It gives our operators real-time traffic counts throughout the day. So, we're able to adjust front-end lines that we need to open and close lines based on the fluctuations of business," Vachris explained. 

"We can monitor our fresh foods a little better because we know what the traffic counts look like and so forth," he said, "and it has also taken the friction of membership verification away from the front-end registers and moved that to the front door, where we're able to look at people's membership status."

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The Costco chief added that the scanners also allow customers to be notified if their membership renewals are due before they reach the front end of the store, "and the membership card scanners installed at the front doors have delivered on the goal of speeding up the checkout process. This has been very well received by our members."

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The CEO also said members are "very excited" about being able to check inventory through the new "search warehouse inventory" tool that Costco recently rolled out for some customers on its mobile app.