TOKYO – Convenience store operator Seven-Eleven Japan Co. announced that it has developed a checkout system that can finish duty-free sales in just five minutes, compared to the 15 to 20 minutes it takes to process such purchases manually. Last fall, the Japanese government expanded the range of duty-free items to include such goods as cosmetics and food, driving more foreign tourists to convenience stores for their duty-free purchases.

The new checkout system can instantly be changed into a duty-free transaction mode, and all a store clerk has to do is scan the buyer’s passport and follow ordinary checkout procedures. Without the new technology, the retailer’s foreign customers would have to manually fill out forms to complete a duty-free transaction.

According to a report in Japan Times, the Seven & I Holdings Co. unit plans to introduce the system at 1,000 locations throughout Japan by the end of July, mostly in popular tourist destinations, with about 2,000 more in operation by the end of February 2016.

The new system is part of a larger effort to lure more tourists into their stores, with Seven-Eleven Japan President Ryuichi Isaka telling news sources that the company is also planning a multilingual description system for products and to develop products aimed at non-Japanese visitors.