Mastercard Lets Customers Pay in Fitting Rooms
The US card scheme keeps considering new scenarios as they try to rethink customers’ purchasing experience in line with ongoing changes in the retail industry. Latest example to date: a Smart Mirror enabling customers to pay for their purchases right from the fitting room.
The underlying technology, designed by Mastercard and Oak Labs, relies on RFID clips in the products price tags so the connected mirror can identify them.
When the customer is in the fitting room, this smart mirror automatically recognises the items and adds them to a virtual cart. It then displays all colours and sizes for these items, avoiding that the customer should go back and forth. The selected products can directly be carried to his fitting room to be tried on. This solution is NFC-equipped so the customer can also pay contactless for his purchases using his card or mobile phone. The payment step can also be completed via a dedicated mobile app. A member of staff with the articles ready to go will be waiting for the customer when he leaves the fitting room.
The connected mirror also displays customised recommendations in real time based on purchases and selected products. This solution will gradually be implemented in some stores in the UK throughout the year.
Comments – Reshaping customer experience in the phygital age
Over the past months, many players have followed in Amazon’s footsteps, and started looking into the opportunities entailed by the “smart retail” sector. Mastercard’s smart mirror is also in line with current technological advancements and ongoing transformation in the retail industry. In October 2017, this US giant placed a bet on AR technologies as a way to improve customer experience. Unlike their Smart Mirror, this service allowed customers to pay via Identity Check Mobile (face and fingerprint-based identification app). Now, the point is to create a richer experience and, eventually, to let go of cash counters altogether. This would also meet an increasing demand on the part of merchants since they are also making adjustments in line with these changes. Besides, the card scheme included a module allowing merchants to exploit customer data, too.
Mastercard has been focusing on this evolution and considering several launches/services simultaneously so merchants would be able to accept payments via all possible technological platforms (online, mobile, AR and VR).