Published: 08 April 2026
Summary
Self-checkout is supposed to make shopping faster, but anyone who’s fought with the bagging area knows how quickly it can turn into friction, queues, and awkward staff interventions. We sit down with BOXTEC Technical Director Leonard Gilbert-Wines to preview the products BOXTEC are taking to the Retail Technology Show at Excel London, and why the next wave of retail technology is all about flexibility: deploy the right hardware now, keep control of uptime, and stay ready for what your software roadmap demands next.
We take you zone by zone through the stand, starting with self-service kiosks and self-checkout hardware designed for easy servicing and power efficiency, including an Android-first tap-to-pay kiosk built for modern payment flows. From there we move into the “hidden” infrastructure: modular, small form factor PCs that can run Windows, Linux, Android, or ChromeOS, plus edge computing options geared for AI workloads in-store, like voice AI and camera AI, without needing enterprise-scale back office computers.
Then we get practical about operations. Leonard explains how Inefi combines MDM with real-time remote monitoring and maintenance, reaching down to the peripherals that cause most pain in real POS estates, like printers, scanners, and cameras, including recovery workflows that can reduce downtime. We also unpack Angible loss prevention AI and how camera-based intelligence can spot missed scans, double scans, and stacking tricks, with prompts that can stay customer-friendly while still reducing shrink. If you care about retail POS, self-checkout, loss prevention, and device management for multi-site rollouts, this one is for you.
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Transcript
Host 0:11
Welcome to What’s in the Box, the podcast brought to you by BOXTEC, empowering retail with purpose. BOXTEC delivers innovative and market leading customer engagement solutions that turn business ideas into a performing reality. From design and integration to ongoing support and maintenance, we’re with you every step of the way. Now, today I’m delighted to welcome a very special guest who is quite close to me, and you’ll realize why very shortly. With over 25 years of experience in IT and technology, my guest today specializes in developing cutting-edge solutions and delivering transformative digital innovation for retail and hospitality. He has partnered with global leaders like Intel and was a key contributor to the development of Ninja POS and the Core 7 POS. He was also part of the founding teams for Inefi Spotlight and Angible AI. More of that later. And is the driving force behind BOXTEC’s new self-checkout range. And when not playing with POS, he loves tuning and maintaining his 1982 air-cooled VW camper van, which he says takes him and his family on beach holidays, all while achieving a lofty 19 miles to the gallon. Perhaps that’ll stay in the garage for the time being with the price of petrol going through the proverbial roof. Anyway, it is a great pleasure to welcome BOXTEC’s technical director, Leonard Gilbert Wines.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 1:48
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you very much. Yes, actually the camper’s on the driveway with a slow puncture at the moment, I’m not making any effort to fix that. So I don’t know.
Retail Technology Show Preview
Host 1:57
I’ve got the ROC app and that’s showing me fuel prices and every day they’re just going up and across. One direction. Yes, it’s one direction, but not quite as we know it. The reason why I wanted to get you on to What’s in the box is of course that BOXTEC are displaying. You have a stand at the Retail Technology Show, so just really wanted to talk to you about that, and what people can expect when they come and visit you. And that’s only going to be in a couple of weeks from now, on April 22nd and 23rd at Excel. So let’s first of all paint a picture of the stand because I believe that you’ve got it divided into product zones. So talk us through that and let’s kick off with self-service and what people can expect there.
Modular PCs And In-Store AI
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 3:00
Yes, absolutely. And for those who visited us last year, we are going to have a similar layout for the stand, so very familiar, but we’re going to actually home-in on those zones. The first zone is Self-Service, we’ve added a few new products to our self-service range, and we’re really focusing on delivering value and flexibility within the range. So we’re going to have everything from our 15-inch brand new self-service device, self-checkout, all the way up to our 22 and our 27 inch self-service, ie., self-order kiosk, you know, tap-tap on the screen rather than scanning first. And one of the most exciting additions is our 22-inch Android first tap-to-pay kiosk, with our soft-pause integration. So some really exciting developments, and we’ll be really excited to share and welcome visitors on the stand to show the latest tech that we have brought to that sector.
Host 3:52
And one of the other zones is Modular. What can people expect to see there?
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 3:58
The Modular range are devices which are usually hidden in the fabric of the building. You know, you don’t normally see them, they’re tucked away. So these are headless PCs that are either running your pulse system, but more and more they are creating very small form factor devices that are energy efficient, multi-OS, Windows, Linux, Android, Chrome OS. And they are running your digital signage platforms. They are back office PCs because of that continuity with our products. And also, we are bringing a brand new product for AI workloads, which allows you to deliver, whether it’s voice AI, camera AI, or loss prevention AI, in-store a very cost-effective and energy efficient platform. So, yes, really exciting space within the modular space.
Mobile Handhelds For Assisted Selling
Host 4:46
So, okay, we’ve got Self-Service POS, which I guess that’s what people know BOXTEC for, but as we’re going to discover here, there’s a lot more to show. So POS, Modular, and then moving on to Mobile, which for me is, from an industry trend point of view, one of the most exciting areas, and I think that we’re going to see more and more of that. Particularly perhaps, but not confined too, the luxury space, I think it lends itself to luxury. We always used to talk about client-telling. I don’t hear that word quite as much now, but I think we all know what we’re what we’re talking about, the assisted sell, if you like.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 5:28
Yes, that’s probably the better way to put it, assisted-selling. So it’s enabling the store associates to have technology on-hand. So, whether that’s roaming through the store or, as you say, shoulder to shoulder with the customer, exploring the extended range or looking at finance options, etc. We have our Ninja hybrid product, which is an 11-inch product, which is an in the hand, integrated scanner, hand strap, and very easy to use. That is a fully fledged PC in the hand. But we are excited that we will be showing exclusively for the first time a brand new form factor in this space, which is actually a pocketable handheld. BOXTEC hasn’t actually delivered this before now because we were looking for the right time, and the right combination of technology, and also integration with our mobile device management (MDM) product Inefi Spotlight, to deliver a really tight package on that handheld space. So, yes, it’d be really cool for our visitors to come and let us to share this with them.
Host 6:27
You mentioned Inefi though, and in the introduction I mentioned that and Angible. Let’s talk about services and finish the five zones, and then perhaps as part of going through some of the products that people can expect to see. We’ll come back to Inefi and Angible, because they’re both very exciting.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 6:47
Absolutely.
Host 6:47
So the fifth zone is Services.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 6:51
Yes, we put Services down in the zone, but it’s actually spread throughout the stand. So Services caters for a couple of things. One, it is our software services, and that’s where Angible and Inefi come in. Angible is our loss prevention AI, perfectly paired with our South Checkout solutions. It’s a bolt-on option for ISVs and retailers. You can take it or leave it if you’re using an alternative, that’s absolutely fine. But we obviously feel that our loss prevention AI has something real special, and that is the how tightly tuned it is to our hardware. You know, it’s a software component that is driven and supported by a hardware manufacturer. So it’s tightly packaged and is really scalable. It won’t catch you out by you needing to have basically a data centre in the back of back office. You can run it on one of our AI machines, and as well as Inefi Spotlight. Inefi is really close to my heart. As you said, I was one of the founding team who defined Inefi, and that was around bringing an MDM, but also a real-time remote monitoring and maintenance package. So I distinguish the two because MDM comes from your tablet, your Android tablet space, and remote monitoring comes from your enterprise, that’s your Windows Linux devices. So, Inefi does that and is does that at a real low level within retail and hospitality because you can have the motherboard and the CPU, et cetera. But really, a system falls over when one part of that system fails, a printer, a scanner, a light bar, a camera, etc. Inefi takes care of all that. So we’ve got some really cool demos showing that. Even in the demanding and challenging space of a trade show, we’re able to demonstrate that. But the other bit is around Android. So with IneFi, we have invested in bringing Android to Intel. So we can talk about those journeys where maybe you need to stay on Windows for now, but your ISV or your software is saying in the future we’re going to switch into Android, and we can show those journeys going from Windows to Android, remotely switching with no engineering resource. You can have the confidence to deploy now and switch later. We can show you that journey.
Host 8:59
And the remote monitoring, because I wish I’d had that facility when I was with my team looking after the POS estates and everything that went with it, back in the days when I was at Superdrug. But just tell us, because I believe that Inefi in itself is quite market leading in terms of, you know, it’s got capabilities that I’m not sure whether they’re available anywhere else.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 9:22
Yes, you’re right. And I do forget sometimes to promote that, but yes, what you’ve just mentioned there about you wish you had something similar, that’s what actually sparked us to develop Inefi. I, as a Technical Director here, my previous role was Technical Manager on the support desk, and just the amount of support tickets that came in where I just wished I was able to reach through the phone and just be on site. That’s what Inefi enables you to do, essentially, to have that real-time sensing of what’s happening on site. You know, I think of cameras being a certain sensor and microphones. Inefi is like the sensor, but for your POS system. And just to touch on one or two things where point of difference for Inefi is that one, we have that deep integration at the low level with the peripherals. So the maintenance counters from, say, an Epsom printer, how many cuts has it done? Has it got a cutter error? You know, we can clear that cutter error remotely. We have deep integration with Intel, VPro. So if you have an i5 or above, we’re able to trigger the remote power-on, remote reboot, also OS recovery and BIOS recovery. We could do that also on our own devices, the BOXTEC devices, at levels lower than an i5. So an i3 or Celeron, we can we have our own module which allows us to do a power on and off BIOS recovery, and OS recovery remotely. That is, it doesn’t need to be paired with a specific module that needs to be defined at the factory. But if you go into it knowing that that is going to add value, Inefi can do that. And then lastly, where the real USP comes from is that it’s a one unified package. You don’t need other third-party remote control apps. Our remote control, when it’s not being used, is actually shut-down. So you remove or reduce that security threshold. It’s only enabled when you click the remote control button, it establishes a link. When you break that, it closes it down. It has an all-in-one platform that allows you to maintain your products, but also get ahead of the game. So sometimes you’re closing tickets down before they’re opened. Essentially, you’re informing the store, you’ve identified a problem, you’ve solved it, or an engineer is going to be with you before your store opens, so we can solve the issue and have no impact on your trading way.
Angible AI For Shrink Reduction
Host 11:34
Yes, so the benefits of that to our audience, whether they’re retail or hospitality, are very clear and very obvious. That’s a game changer. Yes, yes, absolutely. Let’s talk about there being a number of physical, if you like, units, or products, that I know that you wanted to talk about. But before we do that, I mentioned Angible earlier. We’ve got to include that because using AI at self-checkout to reduce or eliminate shrinkage theft is obviously uppermost in I think every retailer’s mind. So tell us a little bit about Angible.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 12:10
Well, just think about that journey at a self-checkout, whereby, for me, I have a 10-year-old and he always wants to help. And you know, you end up with that unexpected item in the bagging area, the bag might be leaning against the sidewall, or my son might have dragged that pot of Pringles over to the side without me noticing. And the check weigh scale is essentially, it’s not really geared towards real-world uses. For me, anyway, when I’m shopping, I see it more as a hindrance rather than a benefit. And looking at the way that the associates in-store handle the exceptions, they also have issues with it as well. So the idea with Angible is to use a dedicated camera. It could be actually your CCTV IP camera or one of our cameras on a pole. And it’s like your eyes, it is literally like your extra set of eyes looking at what’s happening at a human level. And we essentially look at relationships with the product. So whereby, you know, has an item missed a scanner? Has it not scanned? Have you double scanned, which can be bad for stock inventory if someone’s double scanned, it’s not been picked up. Or even that stacking where someone’s, you know, got a something like a wagyu beef joint and they’ve scanned some something similar weight, and they’re trying to trick the check weight scales. Angible AI picks up all of that. And it can either do a really light nudge to the customer to say, hey, you’ve missed that pot of Pringles, Leonard, go and rescan, right? Or, if it’s something where it’s obvious that there’s a bad actor in play, you can freeze the self-checkout, send a light, send a buzz to an earpiece, and you know, have a member of staff come over and assist and try and diffuse the situation. So we’re essentially saying that Angible is, you know, it can’t stop someone walking out the store, but if they’re trying to be a bad actor, or our data shows that a lot of the loss is actually unintended, or where someone’s had a issue with payment and they’ve basically walked away without paying, and we can also pick that up as well.
Host 14:11
Yes. I’ve actually had this the just the other day, this is the first time I’ve done it. My mind was obviously on other things, and I can’t remember what it was, but it went straight from my basket to the bag. But it was a very friendly message that came up. “I think you might have forgotten to…”, you know, rather than “You thieving so-and-so, we’re going lock you up”.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 14:34
And that’s the trick, is actually those technologies we want to train the customer to be a good customer, essentially. Because, your members of staff, they go through training, how to scan, how to interact, and you’re expecting your customers to do the same. And so we enable those journeys, but ultimately it’s up to the retailer how those prompts have come up. Yes, and we have integrations globally where some are harsher than others, or as friendly as you say, “hey, we think you’ve missed that item. Do you want to rescan?”
New BOXTEC Hardware Highlights
Host 15:07
Okay, so we’ve got about five minutes left, and I know that you wanted to just highlight a number of the new products from BOXTEC that people can expect to see on the stand. Just walk us through those, Leonard.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 15:23
Yes, I’ve touched on one or two earlier, but we have a brand new mini PC which is geared directly at AI workloads, but also we can use it as a store PC. So if you have, say, a range of self-service devices or a catalogue style lookup devices, you need a server at the back-end that can drive the content or the uploads locally, and BOXTEC have a dedicated PC for that. We call that a Core 8 Mini PC. We also have three new self-service devices: the Edge 27, the Edge 22, which are Self-Ordering kiosks, and they are very easy to service, very easy to maintain, and also they are very power efficient. So we’re really excited to show those. And the last one on Self-Service is our Edge 15, which is essentially, if you think of a pulse system on the counter, and you want to turn that into a self-checkout. We have a device that essentially can slot straight into there, from the footprint point of view, and also the existing furniture and turn what is a manually manned lane to a self-service self-checkout, which is great for universities, for convenience stores, etc. It’s very easy to service as well.
Host 16:39
Yes.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 16:39
And the last product is an exclusive to be shown at the show, a new handheld device, which enables again Android soft pods, and that is for store operations within retail, but also squarely aimed at hospitality too.
Host 16:55
That handheld, you know, I mentioned earlier about mobile, it’s like a reflection of where the retail store is moving. So, I think it is true to say that we’re expecting a lot of interest in that at the show.
Leonard Gilbert-Wines 17:15
Yes, and we have nested it in a little area where we have the handheld, we have our Ninja hybrid, and we have our Core 7 Poles, which is a new product, but that is essentially a POS unit which is aimed squarely again at that hospitality area. With an integrated screen, scanner, NFC, Wi-Fi, very small footprint. It allows pub groups and hoteliers to have a dedicated system which needs very minimal maintenance, but runs very well, and you can change the orientation of the screen so it can be a traditional landscape system, or you can change it to a portrait, and it can be a self-ordering terminal as well. This one I forgot to mention, but we’ve done it at the end. So yes, really excited for the Core 7 pods as well.
Where To Find BOXTEC at RTS
Host 18:02
Yes, absolutely. Well, that’s a great rundown of what people can expect from BOXTEC at RTS. We’re just about out of time, so that’s all from What’s in the box for today. You can see BOXTEC on stand P78. That’s P78 at the Retail Technology Show, which takes place at the London Excel in just a couple of weeks time, on the 22nd and 23rd of April. Come and see us, we’d love to talk to you about all these fantastic, amazing products that we’ve got. And stay tuned. We’ll be hoping to record some more podcasts at the show. And please follow the link in the description to find more about BOXTEC. And thank you so much, Leonard. That was fantastic. We’ll see you at the show, and thanks for listening.