VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The new iPhone 5, which will be unveiled today, is expected to let you pay without opening up your wallet. But a Vancouver company has already developed an app that lets you do just that; it’s called Mini Checkout.
    
“It’s a checkout system, that enables customers to perform a self checkout by using their own smartphones instead of using cashiers or self checkout machines. For the retailers it’s mostly a marketing platform,” says Laura Aslan with the company.

Here’s how it works: All you have to do is grab the items at the store, scan the barcodes with your phone, and then go through the payment process. You end up with a receipt on your screen, which gets checked by staff before you leave the store.
    
Aslan says it was created to speed things up for shoppers.
    
“You know, line ups are not something we really like, even if we enjoy shopping. So we really, really, wanted to get rid of the line ups,” she explains.
        
She’s working with retailers to try get it started here, but it’s been a slow-go. “In Canada, it could be within the next year, if the retailers kind of agree to make this change, although in Canada things are a bit slower and more conservative.”
    
She says places in Europe, Asia, and the US already have this sort of technology. Aslan is hopeful the pay-by-phone system will become a hit in the industry.

The Mini Checkout app has been chosen as one of the finalists in a contest put on by the Royal Canadian Mint, which challenges software developers to create new currency apps.