RetailTechNews rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European retail technology space. In this week’s edition: Co-op & Mastercard Cooperate for Cashierless Checkout; 70% of Customers Shop via Mobile at Home & On the Go; and Synchronised Online & In-Store Solutions Still a Rarity.

Co-op & Mastercard Co-operate for Cashierless Checkout

Amazon has pioneered the idea, now British retail chain the Co-op is taking up the mantle and introduces checkout-less shopping. Partnering with credit card provider Mastercard, the retailer is adding the cashless, mobile checkout as an alternative to other payment methods.

Currently being run in a pilot scheme at a Manchester Co-op store, the payment procedure is conducted via mobile phone without customers having to pay for their purchases at the till. Mastercard provides their secure digital payment service. According to the Co-op, a wider rollout can be expected as early as this summer, after a further trial at a Co-op store in Reading.

Matthew Speight, director of retail support, Co-op, comments: “It is a challenging marketplace for retailers, and the Co-op is responding positively. Our ambition is to harness technology to deliver the shopping experience that our diverse customer base requires – when, where, and how they need it.”

“With the Co-op, we are bringing our online and mobile capability, Masterpass, into the physical store, and offering consumers who want a fast and frictionless buying experience a secure and reliable way to pay”, explains Elliott Goldenberg, head of digital payments, Mastercard UK. By scanning products using Co-op’s mobile app, shoppers can checkout using payment card details securely stored within Masterpass and leave the store, with both the Co-op and them knowing they have paid.”

The technology not only facilitates payments, but also links information from the customer’s Co-op Membership account – telling shoppers how much they have saved.

In related news, German electronics retailer MediaMarktSaturn has also opened their first cashierless store. Located in Innsbruck, Austria, the store offers payment via barcode scan into the proprietary app. The Saturn Express project was developed in conjunction with British startup Mishipay.

70% of Customers Shop via Mobile at Home & On the Go

Whether at home or in-store, the majority of shoppers are relying on their mobile phone for price comparisons before they take a purchasing decision. According to a survey by iVend Retail, 71.6% of consumers use their smartphone at home or on the go for online shopping, while 60.1% also bring their smartphones on shopping trips to brick-and-mortar stores.

The vast majority of shoppers (91.4%) research products online prior to shopping in brick-and-mortar stores for price comparisons and best-price suggestions. Yet 83.8% of respondents also start their shopping journey in physical stores, comparing prices and then finalising their purchase online.

The Global Path to Purchase survey also finds that shoppers can be enticed into purchasing decisions when retailers provide them with special offers via mobile phone while they are shopping in brick-and-mortar stores; 54.0% of shoppers prefer such retailers, yet 43.0% of survey participants responded that they had no experience of such in-store offers.

Synchronised Online & In-Store Solutions Still a Rarity

The Omnichannel L2 Intelligence Report analysed 97 U.S. and 15 UK brands on how consistently they provide and communicate the value of omnichannel retail using digital touchpoints such as social media or site checkout pages. In a year-on-year analysis, 62% of the evaluated brands now have product detail pages for their in-store inventory in place. The figure almost doubled from 35% in 2016, the report finds.

Omnichannel competency has been significantly improved for specialty retail brands, according to the report. Adoption of the analysed site features increased by 75% over the last year.

Geolocation is widely used by brands, with 71% of brands attracting consumers to their nearest location by offering geolocation within store locators. However, only 60% of those brands close the commerce loop by supporting the infrastructure for in-store pickup, L2 says.

“A slim majority of brands studied year-on-year improved their omnichannel solutions compared to last year, offering a variety of innovations including digitally synced in-store inventory, spending countdowns to free shipping thresholds, and plugins for in-store appointment booking. However, few brands have managed to provide both sophisticated and synchronised online and in-store solutions”, the L2 report concludes.