Retailers including Waitrose and Argos plan to use Powatag mobile technology

The retailers involved are looking at rolling out the technology in a variety of different ways, including placing QR codes next to products in the Argos catalogue.

Shoppers would be able to scan the codes from the catalogue, pay for them, and either get them delivered or pick up in store.

Several UK brands, including Laura Ashley and shoe retailer Schuh, are aiming to roll the technology out in June or July and others are planning to test concepts and potentially roll it out later this year.

Powatag is a mobile payment platform that uses ‘triggers’ to take a shopper directly to an online product that they can then buy. The trigger can be a QR code on a billboard, an audio trigger in a piece of music or a radio ad, an NFC signal in store, a signal from a Beacon device, or image recognition.

French chain Comptoir des Cotonnieres, owned by Fast Retailing, has become the first brand to roll Powatag out, as part of a marketing campaign.

It has 10,000 adverts across France with QR codes embedded into them. The ads appear in magazines, on billboards and on café table tops.

Comptoir des Cotonnieres ecommerce director Valerie Dassier said the brand wanted to experiment with mobile commerce but did not want to develop its own technology.

She added she expects the brand’s core customer to respond well to m-commerce.

“Women have no time, but they need to have pleasure in their lives. I really believe there will be impulsive purchases at bus stops, for instance, that take five seconds.”

She adds the brand will look at other uses of the product, such as video and other triggers used in store, once it has assessed the efficacy of its current campaign.

Powatag is working with a long list of UK retailers on rolling out its technology, many of which are already using Venda, the e-commerce platform owned by Powatag founder Dan Wagner.