Here in Finland handheld scanners have been getting added to more shops, you grab one, scan and bag as you go, and at the end you return the scanner and pay it all at once.

To be fair, anything that allows a Swiss person to avoid small talk will be overwhelming popular.

Can confirm. The only deterrent is the potential for an random bag check by an employee but that never happened to me in years of using self checkout. Some shops have a worker over watching a dozen of stations to help out or just identify suspicious behavior but it's very unintrusive.

Over here it's a mix, some chains use the scales + sensors, some use simple scan machines. I absolutely hate the scale + sensors, some of them are almost completely unusable and the attendants have to keep running around fixing errors or resetting the ones where people just give up mid-cart and go to a manned checkout.

For sure, I use self checkout at at least 5 different places in China and they all work fantastically, including a Walmart.

I avoid places where self checkout isn't available. And, it's not just me. I stopped counting how many time the cashier is jobless and the self checkout area is full.