Queues often make you cringe! They can even ruin a shopping experience. Indeed, who has never abandoned an item in front of a long corridor of customers posted in front of the checkout of a supermarket? To solve this problem, PikkoPay was born! After several experiments in various supermarkets in the country, the start-up of the Technopole de l'Aube in Rosières-Près-Troyes officially launched its service at the Carrefour Contact in Buchères on Monday 25 September.
The objective of this web-application is to eliminate queues in store. In concrete terms, "customers' smartphones become an automatic checkout," says Alexandre Chen. Without downloading and without registration, this tool is accessible via a QR Code installed at the entrance of the point of sale. The customer can then scan the products he wants to buy before paying with his phone and taking a skip-the-line passage. "In general, the output lasts between 25 and 45 seconds," says the co-founder of PikkoPay.
An idea born after confinement
The three entrepreneurs, all 25 years old, had the idea to create this web-application during the first deconfinement. Faced with a long queue in a store, Alexandre Chen had to abandon an article. By studying the subject, he found that "89% of French people have already left a store because of this type of concern". The wait in store has also caused European retailers to lose 16.3 million euros in turnover, according toa study by Ayden in 2018.
If PikkoPay begins its first marketing phase at the Carrefour Contact in Buchères, Alexandre Chen and his team plan to equip 10 to 20 stores by the end of the year!
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Unlike the drive, which also allows customers to do their shopping quickly, the web-application aims to maintain the social link. The idea is to preserve "the in-store experience that is important to users," says Trinh Joe. Alexandre's partner and friend believes that after the health crisis, it was necessary to "mix the physical with the digital". Before buying, the customer can "touch or see the object", which is not possible with Internet sales platforms!
However, PikkoPay does not want to replace cashier hosts or hostesses. The goal is to be "a tool that will allow them to lighten their work, especially in rush periods," according to Trinh Joe.
