by Tom McCole
After surviving a treacherous “Georgia blizzard” with snowfall reaching a frightening 1.5 inches, I made my way safely to the Atlanta airport. Destination: The National Retail Federation convocation in New York City. This is my 25th year of attending this event and I can declare emphatically my favorite so far. The hype of converging automation technologies is finally crossing over to real-world retail solutions, and the market is truly ready to adopt and adapt.
The size and scope of this expo amazes me every year with the new products and technologies brought forth by exhibitors large and small. The NRF 25 Expo hosted 1,000 exhibitors, 6200 brands, and 35,000+ attendees in total representing every continent the world over.
Self-checkout was a dominant technology displayed throughout the expo. 77% of shoppers prefer to use self-checkout in stores because it’s faster than relying on store staff, according to NCR Voyix Corp.’s 2025 Commerce Experience Report.
This year’s standout self-checkout products were:
- Unattended kiosks displayed by: NCR Voyix, Toshiba, Diebold Nixdorf, Samsung, ParTech, Zebra, Hewlett-Packard and a host of others
- Self-scanning checkout stations: NCR Voyix, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Diebold Nixdorf
- Smart shopping carts: Amazon, Instacart, Caper, Shopic
- Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” vision powered systems, which is in use at the Javits Center lobby
- Biometric Palm Reader Checkout: Ingenico, Fujitsu, Amazon
The other key emerging technology that was seemingly everywhere was AI literally for any retail function that you can imagine. AI is finally leaving the hype behind and producing real applications besides answering “who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb or other inane info.” For retailers, AI can provide simplified product discovery via a natural language interface to improve the shopping experience. Through AI-based video experiential application tools, retailers can create personalized, interactive shopping events that keep consumers engaged and enthralled.
Merchants can also quickly gauge their marketing efforts and tweak their marketing campaigns accordingly.
AI for supply chain and inventory management applications were also omnipresent throughout the expo. AI apps finally living up to the hype to bring science to the black art of inventory forecasting, supply chain management, and order processing.
Real-time sales data collection from multiple stores and websites is captured and retrieved at blazing speed. In-store item location research will also tell retailers where the best shelf display location to sell the most of a given product.
Barring another Southern snow crisis, I will be back in NYC next year for my 26th!
Tom McCole is a veteran payment technology executive and business development consultant based in Atlanta. Tom@mmtmagonline.com