Apple is planning several enhancements to its online and retail stores to make shopping easier for the millions of customers they are going to serve over the holidays. The most important among the changes will be the ability for customers buying accessories at the company’s retail stores to pay for them using their own iOS devices, according to a report by MacRumors.
The site is partly banking on info by Eric Chen at Heylookitseric.com, which suggests that an update to the Apple Store iOS app, arriving on November 3rd, will allow customers to take advantage of self checkouts. Customers will also be able to pay for high-value items like iPads, iPhones and Macs using their iOS devices and have employees bring them over from the stock room.
The self checkouts will be monitored by Apple Store employees and customers may be asked to produce email receipts of items they’ve purchased before they walk out the door, but the process is likely to be more convenient than the current system where employees process customers’ payments on their EasyPay devices. It seems that Apple will be deducting money from customers’ iTunes Accounts instead of their credit cards when doing self checkouts.
Apple started allowing customers to pick up online orders from its three San Francisco stores earlier this week and the program has already been extended to cover all Apple retail locations in the Bay Area. It will continue to be expanded to cover stores in other parts of the United States as part of the holiday enhancements to Apple’s overall shopping experience.
The company is also looking to allow more shipping flexibility to holiday shoppers and will soon be rolling out an update to the Apple Online Store checkout process that will enable them to collate all their orders and pay for them in a single transaction, while having the various items shipped out to different locations. It sure looks like it’s going to be become much easier and faster to give your money to Apple in the coming week.
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