Carrefour Generalising Face Recognition for Payments in China

At this year’s China Connect event held on March 12th and 13th in Paris, the retail giant described their omnichannel approach and strategic partnership with Tencent.

This agreement announced a year ago enabled the retailer to roll out new POS checkout technologies.
Situational analysis:

--> All stores in China equipped with scan & go technology (mobile app enabling customers to scan items and pay for them using their smartphone).

--> Half of their stores in China equipped with face recognition technologies.

--> Face recognition-based payment to be made operational in all Carrefour hypermarkets in China (210 locations) in less than 2 months.

--> WeChat-based Mobile payments account for 30% of all payments at Carrefour.

--> 27 million coupons issued for 16 million users.

By way of reminder, the system scans the customer’s face (using a tablet’s camera) and compares him with picture databases in WeChat payment system. If a match is found, the account is debited and the customer can just walk out.

High potential market. Mobile payments are well-established in China, a market also characterised by high urban density and cheap labour, meaning that shipping costs are substantially lower. Also, the legal framework doesn’t implement compelling requirements on private data protection. The French retailer intends to rely on these specifics.
Tough competition. Even if the China offers a great deal of opportunities, competition is tough on this market. Some players are hegemonic (JD.com and Alibaba, for instance). And Alibaba also launched a similar face recognition-based solution.

In May 2018, Carrefour opened their first connected supermarket with the tech giant Tencent. China is becoming a vast testing ground. The French retail group also installed a conveyor belt in one of their stores to speed up online order processing.
A similar system of overhead conveyor belts is used in Alibaba supermarkets Sun Art (subsidiary of Auchan). Auchan Retail used to outrun Carrefour in China but it seems they will be handing over Sun Art Retail to RT-Mart.

Category : Alertes quotidiennes