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Frequent Shoppers Vault

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Authors: 
Saroja Bhaskararayuni, Charles Krupinski, Melvin Towo

Abstract:
Traditionally, selecting between a paper receipt and an electronic receipt or SMS message has always caused friction. Paper receipts are commonly lost, forgotten, or thrown away. Additionally, sometimes customers misplace their payment cards and find themselves in the checkout line with a cart full of merchandise but no way to pay for it. Our Vault platform gathers regular shopper receipts, payment information, text messages, and email acknowledgements in a single, user-friendly application. To earn points and obtain retail incentives, the service enables users to register their frequented stores, their addresses, and any accounts they might have with those companies.

When using the vault app, you must link your credit and debit cards and enable access to additional smartphone features such as the camera for scanning and location. You may now register by adding a facial ID or a fingerprint ID for identifying purposes.

Background:
The traditional shopping experience has always ended with a piece of paper receipt and friction when opting for either an E-receipt or text message. The paper receipt is typically discarded, lost or misplaced. And sometimes, people can forget their payment options elsewhere and find themselves stranded in the checkout aisle with a cart full of groceries and no way to pay for them. This not only affects the customers, but also impacts the globe as the continued and wasteful use of paper receipts further contributes to global warming and pollution. There have been solutions such as Amazon's frictionless stores that aim to provide a seamless walk in and a walk out procedure with no hustle. The drawback to this solution is that it’s limited to the number of people that can be in the store at the same time, requires custom built stores that contain high-cost cameras for people tracking, have some security concerns and requires an Amazon Prime account. Our solution covers all these drawbacks by being much easier and less costly to implement and allows multiple people access to this application.

 

Description:
This Vault platform stores frequent shopper receipts, payment information, text messages and email acknowledgements all in a single easy to use application. The application requires the user to create an account and register their frequently shopped stores, address those stores and link any accounts they may have with those stores for points and store rewards purposes. You need to add your payment cards to the vault app and allow location while using the app and access to other device features like the camera for scanning. Now, you are all set for your registration, you add facial ID or a fingerprint ID for authentication purposes. We believe this solution solves the traditional receipt and shopping experience by introducing a more innovative, safe and reliable way to shop that is both friendly to the environment and easy to use. This approach also helps cut down time spent waiting on checkout aisle availability.

Procedure: When a customer walks into the store, they receive a notification through the Vault App based on location saying "Hey Welcome to store, Do you want to use Vault App”.

When the customer begins shopping, each item they pick can be scanned with the vault app and added to the basket. Once the customer is done shopping, they can use the Vault app to pay with the payment option they added during registration. An E-receipt is generated in the vault app and stored. The customer can also have the receipt emailed to them or anyone else. Receipts will be stored for 6 months, and any warranties associated to a product will also be stored in the vault until it expires.

Usages:

As frequent shopper member, the vault app gives the customer an option to re-shop from purchase history and create 'easy order' lists to reduce scan rate frequency for shopping. For items such as products that do not have bar codes, Produce Recognition can be implemented, and customer only needs to scan the items. Depending on the store visited, if applicable user can receive points and can be claimed in app for discounts and other perks.  

Apart from this, the app can also perform multiple transactions at a single time. This works in both Android and IOS devices.

 

Enabling Technology:

  • Mobile / smart phone
  • Self checkout lanes

 

TGCS Reference 4375

Contact Intellectual Property department for more information