Using the app JeFile, visitors to the Carrefour hypermarket in Paris’s Bercy 2 shopping centre can join a ‘digital queue’, which allows them to be in receipt of an accurate checkout waiting time via their phone, and receive notification when it is their time to make their way to a checkout to pay.
The app offers shoppers the option to push back their time of payment by ten minutes if they realise they require additional groceries. Its application is intended to make the process of paying more fluid, says LSA.fr.
Its role in the Carrefour hypermarket is informed by an October 2012 study carried out by IFOP/Wincor Nixdorf which showed that crowded checkouts put people off paying for their goods when it would really suit them to do so.
The testing process is underway in the Bercy 2 Carrefour store, as well as a few other of its French hypermarkets. The system is easy to run in that it only requires a tablet to coordinate, and is not dependent on manpower.
JeFile is available on Play Store and App Store.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Peter Donnelly. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
