Walmart testing a new mobile checkout service for garden center

Walmart announced Thursday (April 19) it’s testing a new mobile checkout service – “Check Out With Me” – in more than 350 U.S. stores. The service is available at Arkansas Supercenters in Bentonville, Berryville, Fayetteville, Mountain Home and Rogers.

The retailer said inside the lawn and garden center of Supercenters taking part in the are employees with cellular devices and Bluetooth printers who will scan the items, process a card payment and provide a paper receipt for customers.

On the heels of lingering winter weather, Walmart said it has restocked its garden centers with annuals, perennials, lawn furniture, soil and amendments as well as grills. Customers who want to purchase stepping stones or other products outside the store typically have to go into the store, have a cashier look up the item and then ring up the sale. They then have to take the receipt out into the lot and load their items into their cars. The new service saves customers steps and time when shopping for lawn and garden items and is being launched with the spring planting season.

Employees wearing the “Check Out With Me” sash can scan the product on site and process a card payment. Cash transactions must go through a register. This is the first time Walmart has offered a service with mobile checkout options outside the store. Walmart is testing Scan & Go in select stores but that still requires shoppers register to upload the information from the scanning device. Other retailers like Dillards and JC Penney typically use mobile checkout during the busy holiday season and Chick-fil-A uses mobile pay to speed up the drive-thru wait times at its busy restaurants.

Walmart said it will test the new process and listen to its customers as it works on ways to meet shopper expectations. The retailer is not hiring additional staff for the test but is training existing employees who work in lawn and garden centers.

“Check Out With Me is the latest example of our commitment to deliver a more convenient shopping experience that saves our customers time,” the retailer noted.

One of the biggest complaints from Walmart shoppers is the time they spend in line waiting to pay for purchases. Walmart has doubled down on the number of self-checkouts in its 4,700 U.S. stores which has also met with mixed sentiment from its 140 million weekly shoppers.