PAR: Consumers Value Fast AI Checkout
Thirty-three percent of survey respondents said faster checkout would make them switch from one c-store to another.
Oct 05, 2026 | 2 min read
In a recent survey from PAR Technology, 80% of respondents said that they have “encountered AI in a convenience store, most commonly a self-checkout kiosk.” The 2026 Industry Report: AI on the C-Store Customer's Terms also highlighted that only one in five reported no exposure to any AI-powered technology.
PAR said that consumers named their top AI use cases as: faster checkout, in-stock shelves and better, more personalized loyalty rewards.
Consumers also named what would make them switch from one convenience store to another. Faster checkout (33%) and personalized loyalty rewards (18%) were the top two responses. Personalization was a key theme across this report: 57% said they would trust AI to automatically recommend personalized offers based on purchase history and separately, 34% named personalized coupons as one place they’d want AI used.
PAR said this signals that c-store customers want more personalization, but only up to a point: comfort drops once it relies on broader personal data instead of their own purchase history, the report found.
PAR noted three main patterns that stand out from the research:
- Checkout speed wins: “Fifty-five percent of respondents want AI that can enhance their checkout speed, 76%+ would share more data to achieve that and 33% would switch stores for it.”
- Parents are consistently the most pro-AI group: “Ninety-one percent of parents with children under 25 at home have encountered AI in a convenience store, against 74% of non-parents, and parents are close to twice as likely to say they'd hand over more shopping data in exchange for a faster, better-stocked trip (38% vs. 22%).”
- Trust comes down to transparency: “Forty percent rank transparency as their #1 trust factor, and half of all customers say a store becomes ‘too automated’ once they can't easily reach a real employee.”
