Retailers are rethinking self-checkout (SCO) due to their theft vulnerability, and now policymakers are getting involved. A recent New York City proposal is gaining attention, but they’re not alone, as Orange County, Calif., Connecticut and others are also exploring measures that would rein in SCO use.
SCO has clearly become the poster child for retail theft. But there’s a problem with that narrative. It places disproportionate blame on a single moment in the shopping journey while overlooking where most loss actually occurs. If retailers want to address theft, they need more store visibility and not more restrictions from legislators.
Legislation is Rising, but is it Missing the Point?
In New York City, proposals aim to cap the number of items allowed at SCO and require additional employee oversight. In California’s Orange County and Long Beach, officials have explored similar restrictions, while lawmakers in Connecticut are considering bills that would increase staffing mandates or limit how SCO is deployed.
These efforts are designed to create accountability at the register but, like retailer-led rollbacks, they center on only one part of a much longer sequence of events. The other drawback to limiting or eliminating SCO access is introducing new customer experience challenges. SCO has become deeply embedded in the modern retail experience for many years now.
Customers value the speed and flexibility it provides, while retailers benefit from improved labor efficiencies. According to a recent Gallup poll, more than one third of retailers (37%) cited staffing as their top obstacle. Pulling back too aggressively can lead to longer lines, increased pressure on store associates and a more frustrating in-store experience.
There’s also an opportunity cost. When employees are reassigned to monitor SCO lanes to comply with proposed rules, they’re pulled away from other critical tasks like restocking shelves, assisting customers, and maintaining store operations. The risk is that regulations, and the operational changes that follow, may add friction without addressing the root cause of theft.
The Real Challenge is Store Visibility
While SCO contributes to theft, our research found that 80% of commonly stolen goods are concealed at some point in the shopping process before reaching checkout, including under clothing, in bags or hidden in other products. When retailers and legislators focus on just the checkout, they miss the majority of shopping behaviors that drive loss.
This is where store visibility becomes a glaring issue. Most loss prevention strategies are designed to monitor transactions, not the full shopper journey from the aisle to the checkouts and exits. Retailers often have cameras in SCO terminals, and directly overhead, that monitor limited scanning activities and flag items when they aren’t properly scanned. But without sophisticated technology embedded in the cameras, it may see activity like deliberately (or unintentionally) skipping items during scanning or performing a “fake scan,” but won’t recognize these actions as theft in real time. It also won’t capture those who bypass the register altogether with a full cart pushout.
Newer approaches are beginning to address this gap. Advances in computer vision and shelf-level analytics are making it possible to track product interactions throughout the store; from the moment an item is picked up to when a shopper exits, captured on video footage. Importantly, some systems can be implemented using existing camera infrastructure, minimizing the need for costly overhauls. Not all products need to be monitored, as each retailer tends to know their most frequently stolen items, which range greatly between store and region.
Reducing Friction While Improving Outcomes
A holistic view of shopper behavior also enables more nuanced responses. Not every situation requires escalation. In some cases, a simple prompt at checkout, like reminding a shopper about an item that may have been overlooked, can resolve the issue. With others, a targeted intervention by staff may be appropriate. If the SCO alerts the shopper to an unscanned concealed item, it is often enough to prompt compliance.
The key difference is that these all actions are informed by a fuller understanding of what happened in the store, rather than a single data point at checkout. If staff is notified on their phone or tablet of an item concealed in the aisle that hasn’t been scanned at checkout, they can intervene.
This approach helps avoid blunt measures like locking up merchandise, conducting blanket receipt checks or imposing rigid self-checkout limits that can frustrate customers and erode trust.
Spreading Blame Beyond SCO
Self-checkout blind spots shouldn’t be ignored in loss prevention strategies, because it is still a significant contributor of loss. But treating it as the primary source of theft misdirects attention and resources.
As policymakers in New York, California, and Connecticut continue to evaluate restrictions, and as retailers reconsider their own strategies, there’s an opportunity to rethink the bigger picture. Retailers that invest in end-to-end visibility so they can understand the full shopper journey will be better positioned to intervene less often, but more effectively. They can address loss closer to its origin while preserving the convenience that shoppers expect.
Daniel Gabay is Co-founder and CEO of Trigo, a computer vision leader offering retailers full-store, full product journey loss prevention to ensure items picked up from store shelves are scanned at checkout. Gabay co-founded Trigo in 2018 and led the development of the company’s core AI platform before stepping into the CEO role to scale deployments across major retail chains worldwide. Under his leadership, Trigo has evolved from autonomous store innovation into a multi-layer, real-time loss prevention platform. Gabay has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and is an authority on the future of Physical AI, retail automation and privacy-safe computer vision at scale. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
