According to experts, shoplifting occurs every day in the United States. According to Capital One Shopping, stores across the country lost an estimated $121 billion to shoplifting in 2023. Stores in New York State reported a total loss of $9 billion in sales last year.

A New York City Walmart store in the Capital Region is making a seemingly minor change to its business policies in hopes of avoiding some major losses.

Earlier this year, America’s largest Walmart, located at Crossgates Commons in Albany, NY, changed its policy. Now the Walmart Supercenter on Route 9W in Glenmont, NY, is following suit.

Effective immediately, customers at Walmart’s Glenmont (NY) location will only be allowed to use self-checkout lanes with 15 or fewer items, consistent with the policy the Crossgates Commons location implemented earlier this year.

Advantage Solutions reports that self-checkout lanes were originally created to ease customer flow and allow them to move quickly through checkout areas. Self-checkout was also developed to reduce the number of part-time employees or to reassign them to other tasks.

“Express self-checkout” with a limited number of items is nothing new. Earlier this year, Target introduced this policy in most of its 2,000 stores. Nearly 80% of customers use self-checkout at least occasionally, while 50% of customers do most of their shopping at the self-checkout lane.