British fashion retailer River Island teams with Mercaux for self-checkout via RFID in-store

Mercaux is delivering RFID self-checkout into stores of River Island, the British high street retailer, alongside key strategic partners.

Shoppers will be encouraged to use self-service devices to speed up the last step in their path to purchase.

After dropping the items into the “RFID Bucket”, said items appear instantly in a digital basket on Mercaux’s self-service kiosk where the customer completes the transaction.

This is made possible, in part, with Mercaux’s composable platform, allowing retailers to surface the checkout process on any device in-store (store associate or customer), eliminating the need for customers to join a line to be served by a store associate at the traditional cash register.

Mercaux’s technology was deployed and integrated with River Island’s existing omnichannel commerce platform with the support of system integrator, Cabiri.

Paul Cooper, Director of Technology Operations - River Island, comments: “Although still early days, the results from the project have been astounding and could quickly become a game changing development for River Island when the decision is made to roll-out to the wider estate.”

“Whilst we set a target of 50% of all in-store transactions being processed through self-checkout, we are already seeing this figure closer to 70%.”

Cooper adds: “I can’t thank the whole team at Mercaux enough for their speed of delivery, a smooth onboarding process and diligence with monitoring the business critical KPIs to ensure this project’s success.”

Olga Kotsur, Co-founder and CEO, Mercaux, comments: “Exceptional customer experiences should encompass the entire path to purchase, and checkout should be no exception.”

“The pain of checking out in-store is often the primary cause of complaint and basket abandonment, and yet the experience has remained stagnant for many years.”

“By offering an alternative to Legacy PoS, River Island will be able to eliminate maintenance costs and break away from lengthy and expensive on-prem release cycles, towards quicker and more agile upgrades via the cloud.”

“We are delighted that they have chosen Mercaux as a key partner to support them in their vision.”