The service, which enables you to scan the barcode with your smartphone and quickly pay for the item when you pick it up in the mart if you install a mobile app, was introduced in Korea for the first time. Unlike large marts in foreign countries, the inconvenience of carrying a scan terminal has been eliminated, and customers do not have to wait in line for a long time to pay for what you bought. Public attention is paid to whether this system will spread to other stores.

On December 17, Home Plus (CEO Do Seong-hwan) announced that it recently started the `Home Plus Instant Pay Shopping. In the Gangdong Store and the Bucheonsangdong Store, when customers who installed the mobile app put their items in the cart, they can pay for them with their smartphone.

This service makes it possible to pay for items instantly if customers, who installed the ‘Home Plus Instant Pay Shopping’ app on their smartphone, activate the app when picking up items in these pilot stores, scan the barcodes with the smartphone, and submit the `cart barcode` to the cashier.

When done with shopping, customers simply need to check the items purchased and the total amount in the cart page, and submit the cart code at the checkout exclusively for the Instant Pay Shopping. They can quickly pay for the items they purchased without having to stand in line or waiting while the cashier scans the items one by one.

In particular, the `Scan As You Shop` service, introduced at the TESCO stores in the UK, the parent company of Home Plus, required customers to carry portable scan terminals and scan items, but in Korea the mobile app did away with such inconvenience.

Home Plus expected that this service would further shorten the `customer queue,` which directly affects sales. Home Plus said, “Since we became the first large mart in Korea to introduce the `self-counter` system, which allows customers to scan and pay for items for themselves at the counter, back in 2005, the effect has been worth KRW2 billion a year in terms of reduced labor cost and increased sales.”

Accordingly, the company recently installed two `self slim line` systems, a self-counter exclusively for credit cards, in the Bucheonsangdong Store, and began pilot operations in a bid to introduce various services to reduce the customer waiting time.

“Now that we started the pilot service, we will check customer responses and complaints, and spread it to other stores,” said an official from the Customer System Support Team, Information Service HQ, Home Plus. “Customers simply need to install the mobile app, but to increase the number of stores providing this service, we need additional preparations, such as educating store employees, installing additional servers and dedicated counters.”

Kim Yu-kyung | yukyung@etnews.com