Casino Launches mCasino

• Casino Group is to propose its mobile contactless app, mCasino NFC (in Android, BlackBerry OS and iOS) this fall. Designed with ThinkandGo and other partners (including Inside Secure, RIM and Quartz), the app is intended to streamline in-store experience, purchases initiated at home and in nomadic contexts. Currently tested by Casino staff members in a Parisian pilot retail outlet, the app encompasses various services including NFC payments.

• Each product will display a contactless tag. Once scanned it is added to the shopper’s mobile cart to be presented at checkout. Users may also configure several alerts (allergies, etc.), get additional information (nutritional, environmental, etc.), receive customised discounts or redeem their rewards through the app.

• Shoppers may also scan items at home to have new ones delivered. Virtual walls will be installed in crowded areas to let users pay with their phones: a first experimental display is to be tested in Lyon in October.

• The group will also present a new sales channel, the Casino Digital Wall, designed with the help of Adactive: based on a gigantic interactive tablet, the device will display the items as a catalogue would. The user will slide items into his cart and scan the associated QR-code to save his shopping list to his Smartphone and pay. His order may be delivered to his home address or picked up at a drive.

• By the end of the year, Casino should also propose an in-store m-payment feature letting its customers pay with their phone and avoid waiting at checkout.

Source: Press release

• Casino now relies on an innovative “omni-channel” strategy. Its customisable app has been awarded by the Wima USA price in November 2011.

• These technologies could help the retailer leave aside self-service counters and allow for actual time and money savings in its stores: mobile payment could in fact ease cash management processes and reduce costs.

• The display wall, first of its kind in France, reminds one of prior initiatives in Belgium (Cube Delhaize Direct set up in Brussels’s railway station last April) and in Korea (Tesco’s Home Plus walls in Seoul’s subway since spring 2011).