Authors:
Scott Graham, Timothy Crockett, Paul Kokkelenberg
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a method of pre-authorizing the sale of age-restricted items. The customer would have their ID confirmed by store personnel while in the queue; the attendant would then scan the barcode on the ID, which would pre-authorize that ID for age-restricted item sales for a pre-determined time sufficient to allow the transaction to proceed.
Background:
Self-checkout transactions are delayed because of the need for store personnel to physically verify photo-IDs to allow the sale of age-restricted items. This causes customer dissatisfaction because they must wait on store personnel to arrive, and then go through the process of verification and authorization on the Self-checkout system. It also reduces the throughput of the Self-checkout systems. All known solutions involve store personnel interacting at the time of transaction. This serialization will always add time to the transaction process. The proposed solution eliminates this additional transaction time by performing the authorization when the customer would otherwise be waiting in line.
Description:
With the increase in the use of Self-checkout systems, and the reduction in attended lanes, it is increasingly more common to shoppers to queue up waiting for a Self-checkout system to become available.
Age Restricted item sales require the manual intervention of store personnel to physically inspect the shopper’s photo-ID. The normal process is for the shopper to scan the age restricted item, which triggers an alert to the store attendant. The attendant must then go to the Self-Checkout system, physically verify the ID of the shopper, and then interact with the Self-Checkout system to authorize the transaction. The waiting for the store attendant, and the authorization activities all must happen serially and add time to the overall transaction, reduce throughput, and impact customer satisfaction.
To speed up the process, a method of pre-authorizing the sale of age-restricted items is proposed: The customer would have their ID confirmed by store personnel while in the queue; the attendant would then scan the barcode on the ID, which would pre-authorize that ID for age-restricted item sales for a pre-determined time sufficient to allow the transaction to proceed (e.g. 15 minutes). When the customer then reached a Self-Checkout system and scanned an age-restricted item, the system would prompt the customer to scan their ID. Scanning their pre-authorized ID would authorize the transaction.
An extension to this concept would allow a customer to have their ID scanned at a service desk or other attended location at any time during their visit to the store.
Photo-IDs now contain barcodes that can be used to uniquely identify the ID. This allows the barcode to act as a key. The process could be initiated by store personnel engaging with a customer while they were waiting in line or could be initiated by the customer approaching store personnel (at a helpdesk, kiosk, or anywhere else in the store). The customer would present their ID to the store personnel, who would verify the ID and then scan the barcode on the ID (using a mobile device, or any other scanning method). The barcode would then be stored as an authorized ID within the store's IT systems for a limited, set amount of time.
When the customer then scanned an age-restricted item on a self-checkout system, the self-checkout system would offer an option to use a pre-authorized ID to complete the transaction. Upon scanning their ID at the Self-checkout system, the transaction would be authorized and any subsequent age restricted item scans would also be authorized. The barcode would be deleted from the IT systems to ensure that the ID pre-authorization would only be valid for a single transaction. If the ID was not scanned within the set amount of time, it would likewise be removed from the system.
TGCS Reference 2591
