You walk into your local Walmart expecting the usual routine. Grab your items, head to the self-checkout, scan, pay, and leave. Only this time, the self-checkout lanes are gone. Completely removed. Replaced with traditional cashier-staffed registers. You blink twice, wondering if you missed something major.
It sounds like a step backward in our increasingly automated world. Yet for Walmart and several other retail giants, pulling the plug on self-checkout machines has become a strategic necessity. The shift is sending shockwaves throughout the massive retail industry, forcing competitors to reconsider their own checkout strategies while customers react with everything from relief to outright frustration.
The Quiet Rollout That’s Making Headlines
Walmart has been removing self-checkout kiosks at select locations, including stores in Shrewsbury, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio, in favor of associate-staffed checkout lines. The retailer already removed self-checkout lanes from three stores in New Mexico last year. This isn’t some company-wide policy shift happening overnight, though. Walmart already allows its store managers the freedom to adjust the number of cashiers to self-checkout lanes based on need.
What makes this particularly interesting is the reasoning. The decision was based on feedback from employees and customers, shopping behavior and business needs at those particular locations. It’s hard to ignore, however, that theft appears to be a major underlying factor. According to the Webster-Kirkwood Times, the Shrewsbury Police Department responded to 509 calls from the Walmart location between January and May of last year, but during the same period this year, after the self-checkouts were removed, those calls dropped to just 183 with arrests falling by more than half, from 108 to just 49.
Police Chief Lisa Vargas told media outlets they really appreciated Walmart taking this step. That’s not just a casual observation from law enforcement. That’s hard evidence connecting the dots between self-checkout technology and a spike in retail crime.
The Multi-Billion-Dollar Theft Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let’s be real. Self-checkout was supposed to save money. Lower labor costs, faster transactions, happier customers. The reality turned out messier than anyone anticipated. Research from Professor Adrian Beck from the University of Leicester published in 2022 gathered data from 13 major U.S. and U.K. retailers, including Walmart, and found that larger retailers with around half of their sales made through self-checkouts should expect losses in the millions of dollars.
The National Retail Association said shrinkage in 2022 represented $112 billion in losses. That’s billion with a “B.” The news outlet claims that self-checkout thefts are five times more likely than traditional cashier checkout theft. Some of those losses stem from genuine mistakes by customers who don’t scan items properly. Others? Deliberate theft. A 2019 report from the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention in the U.S. surveyed thousands of small-time shoplifters and found that many saw the self-checkout machines as easy pickings due to the lack of staff present.
Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, summed it up pretty bluntly. Theft rates at self-checkouts are reasonably high both because of deliberate actions and accidental mistakes, and forcing more customers to use manned checkouts resolves a lot of these issues and saves retailers money.
Walmart isn’t discussing theft openly as the sole reason for these removals, but the numbers speak volumes.
The Ripple Effect Across Retail Giants
Walmart isn’t alone in rethinking self-checkout. Walmart joins large retailers including Target and Dollar General in scaling back or amending its self-checkout processes. Last month, Target limited self-checkout lanes to 10 items or fewer and gave store managers more control over the ratio of self-checkout lanes to cashier-operated lanes.
Dollar General also said in March that it would reduce self-checkout at thousands of locations and remove it entirely from 300 locations most prone to shoplifting, while at the same time increasing staffing for checkout assistance. Five Below announced similar cutbacks. Even Costco got in on the action. Costco in November added more staff in self-checkout areas after finding that non-members were sneaking in to use membership cards that didn’t belong to them at self-checkout, saying shrink had increased in 2023 in part due to the rollout of self-checkout.
The entire retail industry is clearly reevaluating. What seemed like the future of shopping just a few years ago now looks like a costly experiment with unintended consequences. It’s one thing when a single chain makes adjustments. It’s another when multiple major retailers start moving in the same direction simultaneously.
What This Means for Shoppers and the Future of Retail
Here’s where it gets complicated for customers. 84% of U.S. consumers now prefer self-service kiosks, with 66% of them choosing these options over traditional staffed checkouts. Over half (53%) of Gen Z and millennial shoppers prefer self-checkout over traditional registers, according to a 2024 survey by NCR Voyix. So retailers are removing a feature that the majority of shoppers actually want.
The global self-checkout system market size was valued at USD 5.48 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow from USD 6.30 billion in 2025 to USD 17.28 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 15.51% during the forecast period. That’s massive growth for an industry segment retailers are now actively scaling back. The contradiction highlights the tension between what customers prefer and what makes financial sense for businesses dealing with billions in losses.
Walmart will reduce self-checkout machines in many stores and add more staffed checkout lanes to improve service and reduce theft. Some locations are also implementing a hybrid approach. Other Walmarts are designating self-service kiosks for Spark delivery drivers or Walmart+ subscribers only.
Technology isn’t disappearing entirely. The company is testing Scan & Go technology at select Sam’s Club locations, which uses a mobile app to tally purchases in real-time, combining QR codes and AI to reduce shrink while offering speed and convenience to shoppers. Retailers are clearly betting that smarter technology, combined with the human touch, beats a completely DIY approach. Whether that strategy proves successful remains to be seen.
The retail landscape is shifting again. Self-checkout won’t vanish completely, but its unchecked expansion has hit a wall. Walmart’s move signals that convenience alone doesn’t justify the hidden costs. What do you think about it? Would you rather scan your own groceries or have someone do it for you?
The Jobs Question Everyone’s Asking (And Why the Answer Isn’t Simple)
Let’s address the elephant in the room: what happens to all those cashier jobs? It’s tempting to paint this as a simple win for employment, but the reality is far messier. Walmart currently employs about 1.6 million people in the U.S., making it the nation’s largest private employer, yet cashier positions have been steadily declining for years regardless of self-checkout trends. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects cashier jobs will decline by 10% from 2021 to 2031, driven by automation and changing consumer habits. Here’s the twist though – many of those former self-checkout attendants aren’t becoming traditional cashiers. Instead, they’re being reassigned to online order fulfillment, curbside pickup, and customer service roles that didn’t exist a decade ago. Walmart isn’t necessarily creating more jobs; it’s reshuffling the deck to match how people actually shop now. Some workers welcome the change, especially those tired of babysitting malfunctioning scanners all day. Others worry about the increased physical demands of constantly moving around the store versus standing at a register. The job transformation is happening whether self-checkout stays or goes, which makes the whole debate about ‘saving jobs’ feel somewhat misleading.
The Technology Paradox: Why Customers Actually Hate What They Said They Wanted
Here’s something that’ll blow your mind: surveys consistently showed shoppers wanted self-checkout options, yet now that they’re everywhere, customer satisfaction scores have tanked. A recent study from Drexel University found that 67% of customers have experienced frustration with self-checkout systems, and get this – the average transaction actually takes longer than traditional checkout in many cases. Turns out, we’re terrible at scanning our own groceries. We fumble with produce codes, get confused by weight discrepancies, and inevitably need assistance when the machine freezes after we accidentally scan something twice. Walmart’s data analysts discovered that customers who use self-checkout are 15% less likely to make impulse purchases near the register, which might sound great for our wallets but represents billions in lost revenue for retailers. The real kicker? Younger shoppers, the demographic everyone assumed would embrace automation, are increasingly seeking out human interaction at stores as a break from their screen-dominated lives. This isn’t just about efficiency anymore – it’s about recognizing that sometimes what people say they want in theory doesn’t match what actually makes them happy in practice.
