While research and advisory firm Gartner reports EMV chips help decrease counterfeit fraud, some grocery stores have had to add extra lines to make up for the longer wait times. This will be up to stores to implement though. This feature allows EMV card insertion and removal to take place in about two seconds. Visa has come up with a solution with their Quick Chip, announced in August 2016. They slow down the checkout process because shoppers must wait until a final tally is determined before inserting their card into a reader, then wait for confirmation that their payment has gone through before removing it. These chips, implemented for security, are embedded into credit cards. Sometimes a slow checkout line comes from transactions with cards powered by EMV chips, which store cardholder data. Mobile Payments as Alternative to EMV Chip Cards Technology is taking over the checkout experience, and it’s improving the process beyond the express lane. While this setup works, you shouldn’t stop there.

Fifteen items or less means those shoppers who came in just to buy a few things don’t have to wait in line with the same people who are unloading their overflowing carts onto the conveyer. The well-known express lane is one way grocers shorten wait times. Grocery stores recognize what a meaningful impact an expedient checkout process can have on consumers. If a shopper comes in to make a quick purchase of just a few items and finds they must wait in a long line to do so, they might leave the retailer altogether. There’s an entire mathematical theory dedicated to waiting in line - called queuing theory. If you see the lines next to you moving faster, you might even switch. When you get in line at the grocery store, you probably choose the line that appears to be moving at the most efficient pace.

Grocery store checkout