British fashion retail chain River Island is installing RFID-based self-checkout kiosks using technology from UK software company Mercaux.

River Island will be deploying Mercaux’s self-checkout kiosks alongside RFID buckets, leveraging ISV partners Commercetools, Talon.One, Stripe and system integrator Cabiri.

Shoppers simply drop products into an RFID bucket reader, after which they appear instantly as a digital basket on Mercaux’s self-checkout kiosk.

Shoppers will be encouraged to use the self-service devices to speed up the last step in their path-to-purchase. After dropping the items into the RFID bucket, the items appear instantly in a digital basket on Mercaux’s self-service kiosk where the shopper completes the transaction. The objective of the project is to provide River Island customers with a quick, efficient and fun way to checkout themselves.

This evolution in self-service checkout is made possible, in part, with Mercaux’s composable platform, allowing retailers to surface the checkout process on any device in-store either through a sales assistant or the shopper’s own device, eliminating the need for customers to join a queue to be served at the traditional cash register.

River Island’s vision to provide a fun and speedy way to checkout was achieved thanks to the composability of Mercaux’s technology, meaning it was deployed and integrated with ease and speed to the existing omnichannel commerce platform with the support of system integrator Cabiri.

“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 rollout to the wider estate,” said Paul Cooper, director of technology operations at River Island. “While 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%. 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, CEO of Mercaux, added: “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.”

Mercaux is a member of the Mach Alliance, an independent organisation on a mission to future proof enterprise technology and propel current and future digital experiences with open and connected enterprise technology. The deployment of RFID checkout marks the beginning of River Island’s plans to transform with the support of Mercaux.

Mercaux is transforming legacy point of sale into a suite of composable points of service to enhance a shopper’s entire in-store path-to-purchase, from product discovery and personalisation all the way to checkout, and beyond. Mercaux’s suite of composable technology can be operated by sales assistants and includes assisted selling, clienteling and PoS, or self-served by customers, such as touch-screen kiosks, digital fitting rooms and web apps.