The future of shopping has arrived. Shoppers at the Casino Les Belles Feuilles supermarket in France, one of France’s largest supermarket chains, will soon be able to use NFC (near field communication) in their shopping endeavors. Rolling out in October 2012, shoppers will be able to use their Android smartphones (sorry Apple iPhone geeks but you’ll have to use a QR code or a NFC dongle instead) to scan shelf labels containing NFC tags to obtain details on products including special offers, list of ingredients, supplier details, product videos, nutritional information, and of course, the price of the product. A special mCasino NFC application will keep up with the customer’s shopping basket and will allow check out by tapping their smartphone to an NFC enabled reader attached to the store’s cash register. At checkout, the customer can choose to take their items from the store immediately or have them delivered to their door.
According to NFC World, shoppers will also be able to shop using a digital “wall”.
“During the fourth quarter of 2012, Casino will also introduce the “Casino Digital Wall”, a digital version of a poster store that includes a touchscreen display. Shoppers will be able to touch the wall to select products, discover more information about them and add them to a virtual basket. When they choose to check out a QR code is generated and displayed on the wall. They read the QR code with their mobile phone and check out using the mcommerce engine.”
See the promo video below. Uh, wait a minute, isn’t that a Blackbery the shopper is using? They still make those?
