Alimentation Couche-Tard to roll-out Mashgin Smart Checkout tech at Circle K and Couche-Tard stores
Alimentation Couche-Tard is set to deploy more than 10,000 Mashgin AI powered touchless checkout systems, branded as Smart Checkout, to over 7,000 of its Circle K and Couche-Tard stores during the next three years.
The agreement launches the global deployment of the solution, and is claimed to be one of the largest scale expansions of computer vision powered checkout technology to date.
It builds upon the deployment of Mashgin across nearly 500 Circle K locations in the US and Sweden since 2020, as well as at Couche-Tard's retail innovation lab store on the campus of McGill University in Montreal.
Smart Checkout is a compact countertop device that fits into the existing store layout. It uses computer vision to recognise items presented from virtually any angle and instantly ring them up in a single transaction.
Customers place their items on the system, which uses cameras to ring up everything in under a second.
There is no need to download an app or find and scan barcodes; shoppers put items down, pay as they normally would, and exit the store.
"We're committed to investing in and scaling technology that sets a new standard for convenience with our customers and advances our mission to make our customers' lives a little easier every day," says Magnus Tägtström, Vice President, Global Innovation at Couche-Tard.
"The Smart Checkout system powered by Mashgin's game-changing technology shortens lines, improves the customer experience and frees up our teams to focus on helping our customers. We look forward to introducing this new platform to stores across our network."
Mashgin Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Mukul Dhankar, comments: "Our core technology represents a major breakthrough in the world of artificial intelligence.”
“By reinforcing computer vision models with three dimensional data, we are able to reach 99.9% accuracy when ringing items.”
“This innovation also allows the system to easily differentiate between different sizes of items with a similar appearance, and also makes it flexible enough to recognise grab and go foods like pizza or roller grill items that may look slightly different each time.”
“Another key component to our technology is its ability to learn new objects in less than a minute and sync that data across stores, making it possible to set up a new store in under an hour."
"We've been hearing great feedback from our customers in the stores where Smart Checkout has been introduced, and it's easy to see why. Mashgin's platform is incredibly simple to use and highly intuitive for customers," says Alex Miller, Executive Vice President Operations, North America, and Global Commercial Optimisation at Couche-Tard.
"Through this agreement, I am convinced that we will scale a great tool that makes it easy for our customers and team members, saving time and putting our customers and people first in our global operations."
