By Daniel Gabay, CEO of Trigo

Over the last few months, self-checkout (SCO) counters have seemingly become public enemy number one in the global retail shrink problem. It’s not just retailers speaking out, but local governments as well. Legislators in NY, Connecticut and California are proposing bills to restrict SCO lanes or force stricter employee oversight to reduce theft. In the U.K., prominent retail leaders have gone so far as to blame SCO for a rise in shoplifting, while in the U.S., major chains like Walmart, Target, Dollar General, and Five Below continue to scale back deployments in certain locations.

SCO may be where theft often eventuates, but it’s rarely where it begins. The main issue is a lack of visibility across the entire store. There is a gap between the aisle and checkout that allows theft behaviors to develop, and until retailers address that blind spot, removing or restricting SCO treats the symptom rather than the cause.

SCO isn’t why people steal—but it makes it easier

SCO is best described as the last step of theft in a much longer process. Most theft activity happens before a shopper reaches the register. Research shows that roughly 80% of commonly stolen goods are concealed at some point during the shopping journey under clothing, inside bags, or hidden within other products before ever reaching checkout.

SCO doesn’t create the intent to steal but it makes it easier for shoppers to feel comfortable in their decision to do so. Shoppers who want to avoid payment by concealing items obviously prefer SCO because it removes human interaction. There’s no cashier to make eye contact with or bestow judgement (perceived or real).

Beyond intent, other shifts in shopping behavior are making theft easier to accomplish and harder to detect for loss prevention professionals. The rise of personal shopping bags, accelerated by single-use plastic bans across many states, has fundamentally changed how items move through a store. These bags are often not transparent, and the act of putting an item in a bag from a shelf makes it difficult for checkout focused security solutions to track what actually gets scanned.  In some cases, the bags can be lined with special material or have trap doors at the bottom.

This is a major departure from the traditional shopping model where items were placed in open carts provided by the retailer and then visibly transferred to a SCO or a regular checkout counter. That created a much clearer and trackable product flow. Today, items move in and out of concealed bags throughout the shopping journey, making it much easier to fool checkout-focused systems in place to stop theft.

There are now more unstructured shopping behaviors where legacy loss prevention methods struggle to keep up.

Better visibility means better SCO outcomes

Even though theft begins before checkout, many loss prevention strategies still monitor transactions instead of product journeys. This is partially a technological barrier.

The most common approach today is micro-gesture scanning. Cameras positioned above SCO lanes track hand movements and attempt to match them with scan events. If an item appears to enter a bag without being scanned, the system flags it and sometimes stops the transaction for staff intervention.

This works well for catching simple mistakes but it has clear limitations. It only sees what happens at the checkout, within a narrow field of view. If an item was concealed earlier and never presented to the scanner, it doesn’t exist to the system. This type of scanning also struggles with ambiguity. Shoppers rearranging items, taking out multiple products at once, or using bulky reusable bags can all trigger false alerts. This creates friction for both customers and employees, undermining trust in the system. 

Modern computer vision technology can address these limitations by expanding visibility beyond the checkout. These systems can track the shopping journey from shelf to exit, giving critical context regarding where that item went. By overlaying advanced AI models on existing store cameras, they observe how shoppers interact with products throughout the store, even if an item is concealed in the cart or in a bag.

By the time the shopper reaches self-checkout, SCO just confirms all items by comparing scanned items to the expected basket in real time. If something is missing, the SCO can auto-prompt the shopper with configurable alert responses, according to retailer policy. . This shifts the role of SCO from the line of defense to the final checkpoint in a more comprehensive system.

SCO has become the focal point of the shrink debate, but reducing it or replacing it doesn’t solve the root cause. Reducing shrink is about improving visibility across the entire store. When retailers understand the full journey of every item, self-checkout becomes more accurate, less disruptive, and far more effective. Essentially, it becomes what it was always supposed to be: a more flexible, faster and easier way to shop.

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