J.C. Penney Uses RFID to Go Cash-Wrap Free by 2014

J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson is going all in with his bid to remake the customer experience at the century-old department store retailer. A mobile point-of-sale deployment beginning this fall is just the first step in an ambitious plan involving storewide use of RFID to eliminate traditional cash wrap stations, allowing anywhere, anytime checkout, including self-checkout, by 2014. "J.C. Penney will be moving to a 100 percent [item-level] RFID implementation by Feb. 1, 2013," said Johnson, speaking last week at the Fortune magazine Brainstorm conference in Aspen, CO. "We'll be doing something that no other retailer has done completely."