Piggly Wiggly takes award for loyalty/payments system
Customers at Piggly Wiggly supermarkets in South Carolina will now be able to pay their bills and collect loyalty points with just a touch of the finger, eliminating the need to carry bank cards, loyalty cards and cash.
Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co has also received an award for the Best Customer Touchpoint System during the Seventh Annual Retail Systems Achievement Awards. The company was a finalist alongside global retailers such as Starbucks and Marks & Spencer. Piggly Wiggly won the award for its use of Pay By Touch technology to improve customer service and business processes with innovative, interactive technology applications.
Piggly Wiggly, which recently launched a storewide rollout of Pay By Touch into more than 80 stores throughout South Carolina and Georgia, has been testing the system in four stores for about eight months. More than half of Pay By Touch users surveyed during the pilot said that convenience was the primary benefit of the payment system, which also provides faster checkouts and highly secure transactions.
Pay By Touch plans to launch in additional national retail chains later in 2005 throughout the United States and abroad.
Payment and loyalty The one-time enrolment is simple and takes just a couple of minutes. Shoppers can enrol at Piggly Wiggly stores at the guest services counter, or by visiting Pay By Touch's website. Shoppers select the accounts they want to enrol in a finger-accessed electronic wallet. These include Express Checking, which is a direct electronic withdrawal from an existing cheque account, and/or any existing major credit cards, plus their PFC/Greenbax rewards card. Once enrolled, shoppers can quickly and securely use their fingers every time they pay without the need for cards, IDs, cheques, or even a wallet at participating stores.
The technology does not use actual fingerprints; instead, it uses a set of 40 data points from a finger scan that cannot be reverse-engineered into a fingerprint. The data points are then encrypted to allow for a secure identity match at retail point of sale.
For additional information: · Visit Piggly Wiggly at http://www.thepig.net · Visit Pay By Touch at http://www.paybytouch.com