Line cutting: Mobile checkout headed to a store near you.

 

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Nordstrom is quickly replacing cash registers with mobile checkout, joining J.C. Penney, Apple and what's expected to be a rush of other retailers to embrace technology to eliminate lines.

J.C. Penney hopes to get rid of cashiers and cash registers by 2014, and instead have salespeople use iPod Touch devices to check out customers, or self-checkout lanes.

Starting this weekend, salespeople in Penney's new Levi's shops will use only iPads to check out customers. All of Penney's 1,100 stores will offer mobile checkout by the end of the year, spokeswoman Kate Coultas says.

More than 6,000 Nordstrom salespeople are already using mobile devices to check people out, just like at Apple stores. By the end of this year, Nordstrom salespeople will be able to do everything on their handheld devices that they can at a register, says Jamie Nordstrom, president of the company's online division.

"I believe the future of our point-of-sale systems is completely mobile," he says. "It's hard to know whether it's in one year or five years because the technology is evolving so rapidly."

Several grocery stores — Costco and Sam's Club are two — already use employees armed with mobile devices for "line busting," retail consultant Kevin Sterneckert says. The workers scan products for customers standing in lines and print a bar code that they can take to cashiers to pay.

Nordstrom salespeople will still be able to make change, but not with the "cash registers of yesterday," Nordstrom says.

"As long as there is cash, we'll always be happy to accept cash," says Nordstrom, great-grandson of the chain's founder.

Other stores where customers interact often with salespeople will likely start adopting mobile checkout, says Sterneckert, vice president of research at technology advisory company Gartner.

"If you go through the whole process of shopping with help along the way, why should you have to stop and be funneled to a line?" he says.