Four years ago, in a move designed to explore the viability of new offline sales models, Alibaba ran a little experiment. Two of its financial service offerings, Alipay digital wallet and its onboard credit scoring platform Sesame Credit, cooperated in the launch of two unmanned supermarkets. The stores, one in Beijing and one in Hangzhou, took an exploratory dip into the waters of honor-system retail. But these stores were more than a test of the model’s economic viability – they were also a means to gather data on social trustworthiness. The results? A rather abysmal 62% of shoppers paid for their…

This story continues at The Next Web