BACKGROUND

Organizations and consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about the use of plastics and the effects that discarded plastics have on the environment. One area where plastic usage is particularly problematic is grocery shopping. Some countries, states in the United States of America (such as Hawaii), and retailers have completely banned the use of disposable plastic bags for use by consumers when checking out of a store. Some retailers have started charging for any plastic bags provided to their customers in an effort to discourage customer usage of the plastic bags.

Unsurprisingly, nearly every consumer household has a plurality of reusable shopping bags that the carry with them in their cars for use when retail shopping.

Meanwhile, retailers have also made significant strides in streamlining and automating the shopping experience of their customers. For example, consumers can scan item barcodes while shopping using their phones, bag the items, and use a self-checkout station or their phones to pay for the items to checkout of the store. Recent advancements allow consumers to be identified when entering the store through automated check-in mechanisms, pick items off shelves, place the items in bags, and leave the store; the items purchased are identified through images captured of the consumers and paid for via a mobile application on the consumers' phones. This latter type of advancement is referred to as a frictionless store.

Nearly all of the recent advancements require a consumer to be in possession of a phone with an appropriately installed mobile application that is utilized during the automated shopping experience. However, consumers can and do forget their phones, sometimes their phones were left in their cars, sometimes their phones were left at their homes.

The average consumer is aware of the latest shopping service offerings provided by retailers and he/she is usually excited about participating in those service offerings, The average consumer also wants to be an environmentally-conscious consumer and avoid using throw-away plastic bags.

SUMMARY

In various embodiments, a reusable bag with an integrated wireless identifier and methods of operation are presented.

According to an aspect, a method for processing a transaction utilizing a reusable bag with integrated wireless identifier is presented. A unique identifier is received from a wireless tag integrated into a bag during a transaction at a transaction terminal. A payment account that is linked to the unique identifier is obtained. At least a portion of a transaction total for the transaction is processed against the payment account for a checkout of the transaction at the transaction terminal.

