Amazon reportedly plans to build thousands of cashier-less Amazon GO stores by 2021

Amazon Plans to Open 3,000 Cashierless Stores by 2021 The futuristic retail spaces promise to bring “no lines, no checkouts,no registers.” Customers will simply walk into stores, scan items on their smartphone and leave. The e-commerce giant already has three automated Amazon Go locations open in Seattle. Amazon also opened a cashierless store in Chicago within the past week. Retailers including CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target and Kroger saw shares decline following the news. The existing Amazon Go store

After unveiling its first cashier-less Amazon Go store near its Seattle headquarters in 2016, Amazon Inc. is reportedly planning to expand with as many as 3,000 new locations across America.

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Bloomberg announced the news Wednesday, citing “people familiar with the matter” as sources.

The news site reported Amazon is considering plans to open as many as 3,000 new Amazon Go stores in the next few years, immediately sending shares of its rivals, Walmart Inc., Target Corp. and Kroger Co. down. Kroger Co. saw a decline of as much as 3.1 percent.

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“Adding 3,000 convenience stores would make AmazonGo among the biggest chains in U.S.,” Bloomberg reported. “The internet giant is considering plans to have about 10 locations open by the end of this year, about 50 locations in major metro areas in 2019, and then as many as 3,000 by 2021, said the people, who requested anonymity discussing internal plans.”

The biggest challenge facing the monumental expansion, sources told Bloomberg, is the high cost of opening each store. The company spent more than $1 million on the hardware alone for the original Amazon Go store in Seattle. But “such an expansion could put Amazon back into an investment cycle,” the site reported. “Bezos is willing to lose money on long-term initiatives when he smells opportunity.”

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Amazon Go is a futuristic grab-and-go grocery store where there are no cashiers, checkout lines or shopping carts.

Customers can gain entry into Seattle’s roughly 1,800-square-foot store by scanning the Amazon Go smartphone app at a turnstile, which opens a set of plastic doors.

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Once in, you can just take items off of the shelves as you would in any other grocery store and drop them into your bag of choice. The items automatically get added to a virtual cart.

If you put something back on the shelf, it’ll be removed from your virtual cart.

When you’re done shopping, you can just walk out. A receipt should appear in your app about five minutes later.

Read more at Bloomberg.com.