How FairPrice’s AI Smart Carts Work—and What the Punggol Pilot Revealed

Once shopping begins, the shopper scans each product before placing it in the cart. The cart’s sensing system is intended to help check that scanned products match what has been added, providing an additional control alongside barcode scanning.

The cart’s display also works as an in-store guide. Shoppers can search for products and receive directions, while the system can highlight promotions for nearby products and make recommendations based on the basket.

Payment takes place on the cart through the scan-and-go journey, so shoppers do not need to move their items to a conventional cashier before completing the purchase.

The AI assistant adds a conversational layer

At the Punggol outlet, the cart is also part of FairPrice’s conversational-AI experience. Google Cloud says shoppers can interact with an in-cart assistant through the integrated tablet for personalised product recommendations. The underlying system uses Google Cloud speech recognition and the multimodal Gemini API.

Other descriptions of the programme point to use cases such as product discovery, recipes and complementary-item suggestions. These features make the cart function less like a payment device and more like a digital shopping assistant operating in the aisle.

What happened in the Punggol pilot?

FairPrice said the Smart Cart trial at its Punggol outlet reduced checkout time from about six minutes to an average of 36 seconds.

That figure should be read as a reported pilot result, not as a universally guaranteed shopping time: the actual experience can depend on basket size, scanning accuracy, payment and any checks required during the transaction. Still, the reported result illustrates the programme’s central promise—moving checkout into the shopping journey instead of leaving customers to join a separate queue.

FairPrice also reported average basket sizes of up to three times those of traditional-checkout shoppers. That is a commercial result reported by the company and cited in coverage of the programme, rather than an independently audited comparison.

The practical benefits are therefore fairly clear even where the wider commercial claims need context:

• Less time at checkout: payment is completed through the cart rather than at the end of a cashier queue.
• Easier product discovery: the screen can help shoppers locate products in the store.
• More visible promotions: relevant offers can be surfaced while shoppers move through the aisles.
• A more guided shop: recommendations and conversational assistance can help with product choices, recipes and complementary items.

Where the carts will go

The planned expansion covers 48 larger FairPrice Finest and Xtra supermarkets, including outlets such as VivoCity, Jewel Changi Airport, Nex, Junction 8 and Bedok Mall, according to reporting on the rollout.

Choosing larger stores is logical for a trolley-based system: shoppers in bigger supermarkets are more likely to need a cart and may benefit more from aisle navigation and in-cart checkout. FairPrice’s own Store of Tomorrow description confirms the broader target of more than 1,300 carts across 48 Finest and Xtra outlets by the end of 2026.

Smart Carts are one part of the Store of Tomorrow

FairPrice’s plan links the carts to several other customer and staff-facing technologies.

Digital price cards

Digital price cards are intended to make pricing and promotional information easier to manage in stores. They complement the Smart Carts by bringing more of the information shoppers need into a digital, updateable format.

ShopBeyond

ShopBeyond connects physical in-store displays or price tags to FairPrice’s online catalogue through QR codes. A shopper can scan a code to view a product page, add items to an online cart and browse products beyond what is physically available on the shelf.

MyInfo-enabled discount verification

The Punggol trials also included automated verification for some government-linked discounts. Reporting described a process in which the FairPrice Group app uses Singapore’s MyInfo data vault to verify eligible shoppers, allowing qualifying discounts to be applied without the same manual staff check.

The supplied evidence supports the MyInfo component, but does not establish the full operational design of a separate CHAS integration. That detail should therefore not be treated as confirmed for every Smart Cart transaction.

Grocer Genie for store staff

Grocer Genie is the staff-facing side of the programme. It is described as a mobile virtual assistant or staff portal intended to help employees access operational information and manage store tasks more efficiently.

Coverage of the Punggol store also describes an AI chatbot for work-related queries, alongside tools that support task allocation and operational insights.

The bigger shift: a supermarket as a connected system

The significance of FairPrice’s rollout is not just the number of carts. It is the attempt to connect the physical supermarket with the retailer’s app, online catalogue, pricing systems, promotional engine and AI assistants.

For shoppers, that means one cart can combine navigation, scanning, recommendations and payment. For staff, the same broader programme adds digital operational support. For FairPrice, the Punggol pilot provides a test case for extending this connected model across larger stores.

The 36-second figure is the most attention-grabbing result, but the more durable change may be the shift in where supermarket services happen. Product search, promotional discovery and checkout no longer have to be separate steps at separate parts of the store: FairPrice is putting them together on the trolley itself.