The Casino Group supermarket chain in France is claiming it will open the world's first "completely NFC" supermarket in a popular shopping district of Paris.
Starting in October, shoppers at the chain's Les Belles Feuilles branch will be able to use Near Field Communication-equipped smartphones not just to pay but also to scan items as they place them into shopping carts.
NFC payment technology has been hit-or-miss in the U.S. so far — Google endorses it, Apple shuns it, and systems like eBay's PayPal SCVNGR's LevelUp consider NFC to be optional. In light of this, payments players throughout Europe and the U.S. are likely to watch closely how Casino Group's "complete NFC store" plays in the eyes of consumers.
For now, the supermarket chain's focus is on the communications aspects of NFC, which illustrates the valid uses of NFC when combined with payments, says Zil Bareisis, a London-based senior analyst for research firm Celent.
The payments element remains a key, however, because even though NFC can be used as an information provider, other technologies achieve that same objective, Bareisis says.
However, Bareisis is not convinced that shoppers are going to enjoy scanning their own items.
"I tried it a couple of times, and found that I didn't like having to carry around a scanner (phone) and always think about scanning every item as I put it into my trolley for the sake of saving a few minutes at the checkout," he says.
Gareth Lodge, also a London-based industry analyst with Celent, says it remains to be seen if consumers will see an advantage in NFC scanning as compared to other methods.
"Who benefits from this?" he asks. "As a consumer, unless I can see the self-service queue is small, then I'm not sure what's in it for me."
At the Paris store, shelf-edge labels containing NFC tags will provide lists of ingredients in the products, information about the supplier, videos about the product, pricing and any special offers.
When scanning items and placing them in a shopping cart, consumers will use an NFC application from mCasino that adds up product costs and places items in a virtual shopping cart on the smartphone, Casino says. Shoppers can personalize the application to reflect their buying preferences, while also storing loyalty cards and promotional offers — in effect, creating a Casino supermarket mobile wallet. They can also view the contents of the virtual cart to monitor spending totals and add or delete a product.
For the first two months of the launch, shoppers will pay at checkout either through a payment card or cash, with the smartphone tap-and-pay technology expected in place before the end of the year, Casino says.
In addition to the all-NFC store in Paris, the Casino Group plans to establish "poster stores" at various locations such as transportation hubs at which shoppers can scan items shown via NFC tags, QR codes or bar codes and place them in their virtual shopping cart in the same manner as being in the store, and then either go to the nearest store to pick up the items or have them delivered to their home, Casino says.
The mCasino application operates on any NFC-enabled Google Inc. Android or Research in Motion Blackberry phones and also with an NFC sleeve on an Apple iPhone, Casino says.
