Walmart Rolling Out Major Change in Michigan and Indiana

Walmart has adopted advanced technology that will make your shopping experience easier unless you're a shoplifter.

Usually, when a video goes viral on TikTok about a huge box store like Walmart, it's not good. However, this is pretty awesome for anyone who uses self-checkout and gets super annoyed when items won't scan.  That's why I was excited to see this video on my FYP today.  The video below (you will need TikTok to view it) has over 400,000 views in less than 3 weeks.  The 10-second video shows a young woman randomly scanning a Walmart item without going near the barcode and the register recognizes it.

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I can't help but think about all of the times I had an item with a damaged or missing barcode and had to ask for help from an employee.  Well, that will no longer be an issue as Walmart has expanded its partnership with a tech company for this technology according to TheStreet.com,

The discovery comes after Walmart partnered with Digimarc, the company that’s behind the new feature, to innovate its barcodes for $3 million a year.

Is Walmart spending an extra $3 million a year to make your shopping experience a little bit faster and easier?  Not exactly.  Sure, speeding up the shopping process is a benefit to the store and its customers but this is about theft.

Walmart is reportedly losing $3 billion a year in products due to theft.  Many thefts happen at self-checkout.  Some of those are intentional and some are accidental.  This new scanning feature is supposed to help prevent both.

Just a year ago Walmart had to close a store in South Bend, Indiana due to overwhelming theft at their Portage Road location.

There's no word on how quickly this new scanning technology will be rolled out to all stores.

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