Aldi Nord Checkout-Free Store Adding Checkout

The Aldi checkout-free store in Utrecht, Netherlands. (Credit: Aldi Nord)

As many Aldi followers know, Aldi is technically two companies: Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd. The two companies, while separate, closely cooperate in a number of ways, including in certain negotiations and in maintaining a common international website.

Aldi Süd, which owns Aldi in the United States, has been innovating on the checkout experience for some time now. Aldi Süd has used stores in the United Kingdom to pilot a lot of its ideas. For instance, Aldi UK served as the starting point for self-checkout, an experience that is quickly becoming a fixture in American stores. Aldi Süd is also testing a checkout-free experience called Aldi Shop & Go in one of its London locations, although that looks to be a ways off from hitting U.S. shores.

Aldi Nord is perhaps less known to Americans and the larger English-speaking world, since Aldi Süd owns all the Aldi stores in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia. However, Aldi Nord is a force in much of Europe and also owns Trader Joe’s in the U.S.

Like Aldi Süd, Aldi Nord has also been testing out a checkout-free experience. In July of 2022, Nord opened a pilot checkout-free store in the Netherlands under — not coincidentally — the same name as the Aldi Süd store in London, Shop & Go. The Netherlands store, located in the city of Utrecht, partnered with a tech company to install hundreds of cameras in the building, which track customer movements and then auto-organize everything a customer picks up in an app. Before a customer leaves, they confirm their purchase on the app, which then pays for the food with a connected credit card.

Some changes are coming to the Nord store. In July 2023, a year into testing, Aldi Nord announced that it was adding a payment terminal. The cameras will still track customers and the products they pick up, but shoppers can proceed to a terminal, pay for the purchase, and then get a QR code that is their exit ticket from the grocer. Nord noted that some shoppers were reluctant to use the app, so the plan is to make the store a little more accessible.

Aldi Nord also said that the terminal will accept more than just a credit card. It will take Google Pay, Apple Pay, and debit cards as well, something the app did not. The store does not accept cash.

Will Checkout Free Ever Come to the United States?

Amazon has been experimenting with its own checkout-free stores, AmazonGo and Amazon Fresh, at a few dozen locations in major cities in America as well as London in the United Kingdom. However, Aldi Nord and Süd are still very much in a single-store pilot stage, and they appear to be in no hurry to go checkout-free anywhere else. It could be a long time before Aldi Süd brings the experience to the States, and it’s unclear if Trader Joe’s would ever host Aldi Nord self-checkout technology.

So, for now, the answer appears to be: not in the near future.