A system for managing and transferring a virtual shopping cart. The system includes a product identification system that is programmed to identify products from a product identification tag, a cart identification system that is configured to generate a cart identifier that uniquely identifies the virtual shopping cart, and a cart management engine. The cart management engine is configured to receive products to add to the virtual shopping cart from the product identification system, associate the products with the cart identifier, and transfer access to the virtual shopping cart from a first device to a second device.