Kroger introduced the first commercial self-checkout system in 1986.
The system was developed by inventor David R. Humble and installed at a Kroger supermarket in Atlanta, Georgia. Customers could scan their own items and complete payment with limited assistance from store staff, an approach that was experimental at the time.
Self-checkout later spread through supermarkets, department stores, and other retailers as scanning, payment, and computer systems improved. The technology is sometimes confused with self-service checkout experiments in earlier decades, but Kroger's 1986 installation is commonly cited as the first commercial self-checkout system.