Amazon appears to be preparing to open checkout-free grocery stores in Britain after registering a UK trademark for its Amazon Go format.
The online retailer opened its first bricks and mortar foodstore on December 5 near its headquarters in Seattle.
Amazon employees can shop there and it will open to the public early next year.
Customers can walk out without queuing or paying at a checkout.
Instead, sensors record the items they pick up and charge them to an Amazon Prime account.
Amazon has remained quiet about whether it plans to launch Amazon Go outside the US.
It registered a UK trademark on December 5, indicating it intends to bring the format to Britain.
Neil Campling, an analyst at Northern Trust Capital Markets, said: “Amazon want to disrupt and take out inefficiencies from retail whatever the format. We’ve seen Amazon try out pretty much every one of its ideas from the US in the UK and I wouldn’t be surprised if next year we see the launch of a very similar service.”
Campling said Amazon used the UK as its first non-US market for new formats because UK consumers have proved themselves open to new ideas such as online shopping and Britain has few trading restrictions to stop Amazon shaking up the market.
What is convenient for shoppers could be bad news for retail employees.
The New York Post said Amazon Go would “automate American workers out of existence”. A US analyst estimated Amazon’s technology might eventually wipe out three quarters of US grocery store jobs.
Before the launch of Amazon Go, the British Retail Consortium predicted almost a third of the UK’s 3mn shop jobs would disappear by 2025 as companies use technology instead of people.
If Amazon Go catches on in the UK, established retailers would probably be forced to match its convenience to keep their customers.
The prospect of rapid automation of the retail industry has added to unease about the use of technology to replace human workers.
Capita, the outsourcing company that collects the BBC licence fee, said this week it would cut 2,000 jobs and plough the cost savings into developing robots.
The Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane warned earlier this year that 15mn UK jobs could eventually be lost to robots.
