Multifunction point of sale system

A point of sale system for facilitating a checkout process comprising tallying items for payment, the point of sale system being capable of operating in either (i) an indicia-reading mode or (ii) a verification mode, and the point of sale system comprising:

• an illumination subsystem configured to illuminate items with radiation from at least one light source;
• an imaging subsystem configured to acquire images of the items illuminated by the illumination subsystem;
• an indicia-reading subsystem configured to decode indicia information from images acquired by the imaging subsystem when the point of sale system is in the indicia-reading mode, so that the decoded indicia information is configured for use in the tallying of the items;
• and
• a verification subsystem configured to:
• verify items from images acquired by the imaging subsystem when the point of sale system is in the verification mode, and
• produce an output corresponding to the verification, so that the output is configured to restrict the checkout process when the output is indicative of a failed verification,
• wherein the point of sale system is configured to automatically change from the verification mode to the indicia-reading mode in response to the output from the verification subsystem being indicative of a passed verification.

A point of sale system for facilitating a checkout process comprising tallying items for payment, the point of sale system being capable of operating in either (i) an indicia-reading mode activated by default or (ii) a verification mode, and the point of sale system comprising:

• an illumination subsystem configured to illuminate items with radiation from at least one light source;
• an imaging subsystem configured to acquire images of the items illuminated by the illumination subsystem;
• an indicia-reading subsystem configured to decode indicia information from images acquired by the imaging subsystem when the point of sale system is in the indicia-reading mode, so that the decoded indicia information is configured for use in the tallying of the items;
• and
• a verification subsystem configured to verify the item from images acquired by the imaging subsystem when the point of sale system is in the verification mode and to produce an output corresponding to the verification,
• wherein the point of sale system is configured to transition from the indicia-reading mode to the verification mode in response to an authentication criterion being met.