The challenge

British Telecommunications plc wanted to explore the potential of NFC for its retail showcase in London. The concept store houses the latest communication and retail payment technologies. In particular, our client wanted to look at how NFC could drive impulse purchases and improve the issuance and redemption of coupons and personalised offers. We were asked to define customer propositions and build prototypes to allow retailers to understand and test the benefits of NFC in a simulated shopping and back office environment.

Our approach

We identified three applications, chosen for their relevance to retail's core functions and ability to demonstrate the power of NFC.

1. Payment

The acceptance infrastructure for NFC phone-based payments is the same as for standard contactless payment cards. This, coupled with a rapid rise in the number of contactless card projects, makes payment an interesting opportunity. We used storyboards to capture the customer journey covering:

Payment by tapping the NFC phone on the POS terminal
Transaction confirmation displayed on the phone
Links to additional personalised offers alongside payment confirmation

2. Loyalty

Loyalty is another popular card-based proposition that can be significantly improved, from both the customer and retailer perspective, when integrated with a mobile phone. We used storyboards to map the following scenario:

Customer enters store and taps their NFC phone on the information and offers kiosk
Customer receives a personalised text message with special offers

3. Mobile advertising

RFID tags embedded in simple posters can provide a compelling response mechanism without SMS or shortcodes. Using storyboards we outlined the following simple sequence:

Retailer promotes a product using an RFID-tagged smart poster in the window
Customer taps phone to poster to receive product information and a time-limited money-off voucher
Coupon is redeemed at POS much like a simple contactless payment transaction

Results

Having agreed the propositions with our client, we built the applications within our NFC framework solution Proxama Touch. As well as integrating the solution, we supplied all hardware and software while ensuring minimum disruption to the in-store infrastructure.

The applications, hosted on our test server, are live from autumn 2008.