State Trading Organization (STO) has opened the first ever cashier-less smart store in the Maldives.
STO redeveloped its retail outlet in Hulhumale’ Phase 1 into the smart store, which was officially opened by Maldives Vice President Faisal Naseem.
The new outlet, earlier teased by STO’s Managing Director, was developed under the ‘grab and go’ concept, a popular retail shopping method in several foreign countries, which debuted to the world in 2016.
All retail shopping process is carried with the usage of a digital application installed on the consumer’s smartphone, through which the customer can easily check out their items and pay to their items via the same app.
Customers can download the application and then register either their debit or credit card to create their login. Each customer is charged MVR 3.00 upon successful registration of the bank card, which is included in the first retail transaction of the customer.
The smart store allows customers to access the outlet after they scan the QR Code generated by the app, and those who do not have their smartphone in possession can access using the smart face-recognition feature at the entry.
The purchased items from the store are paid through a process called ‘tokenization’.