Abstract
Drawing on a range of international examples, this chapter examines the impact that customer operated payment systems (COPS) are having on the retail industry, and in particular on crime. Organised broadly into four parts, it first provides an overview of new developments in COPS and maps their future trajectory, exploring the emergence of self-service checkout (SCO), scan-as-you-go, and mobile payment systems. It then turns to mapping the known impact on customer theft before outlining some of the key concerns and vulnerabilities about their implementation. The final section considers the future of point of sale (POS) technology, including sensor-based retailing, and the impact on retail crime, providing recommendations to the industry on how to embrace customer autonomy in the age of automation and deliver retail solutions that are cognisant of potential vulnerabilities and risks.
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Notes
- 1.
In June 2010 a Tesco Express in Northampton became Britain’s first self-service only store. It had five self-service checkouts overseen by a single member of staff and no staffed checkouts. Tesco described it as an ‘assisted service store’ (ASS), designed to increase efficiency.
- 2.
The annual number of customer thefts per 100 stores had increased by 5Â per cent from the 2012 rate, and that 2013 had the highest number of shop thefts in the past nine years (BRC, 2014). While some may interpret this as symptomatic of an overall upward trend in the occurrence of customer theft, it could also be read as a growth in the number of offenders being apprehended and prosecuted, and thus simply a greater uncovering of the dark figure.
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Taylor, E. (2018). COPS and Robbers: Customer Operated Payment Systems, Self-Service Checkout and the Impact on Retail Crime. In: Ceccato, V., Armitage, R. (eds) Retail Crime. Crime Prevention and Security Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73065-3_5
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