The News

Largest Retail Deployment of Contactless Loyalty Sticker Technology in France

21/10/2009

AIX-EN-PROVENCE France, October 21, 2009 – INSIDE Contactless, the world leader in advanced open-standard contactless chip technologies, today announced a partnership with ADELYA, a Software-as-a-Service company specialized in contactless and mobile loyalty and relationship programs, to enable consumers to quickly conduct retail loyalty, ticketing, low-end ID and other transactions using the mobile phones they already have.  INSIDE is providing ADELYA with technology to transform mobile phones into contactless loyalty cards, and more than 300,000 loyalty cards embedding INSIDE’s PicoPass contactless stickers have already been delivered throughout France to retailer Tape à l'oeil, a children’s clothing retailer, making it the largest retail deployment of contactless sticker technology used for loyalty and relationship programs in the country.

“Through our partnership with ADELYA, our PicoPass stickers are enabling the loyalty card to finally join the mobile phone, offering retailers an exciting way to differentiate themselves and promote their brand while allowing customers to adapt to the idea of using their mobile phones as loyalty cards in advance of handsets that will have this capability already built in,” said Carloman Grelu, EMEA Sales at INSIDE Contactless.  “In addition to loyalty cards, we are exploring other ways to use our PicoPass contactless stickers, such as enabling customers to more conveniently ‘top up’ their prepaid SIM cards simply by placing their phone near a contactless terminal.”

ADELYA was eager to provide Tape à l’oeil with an innovative, never-seen-before, fun way to interact with shoppers. The concept of the contactless stickers came from ADELYA and the project was managed with INSIDE and FCI Microconnections. As a technology partner with ADELYA, INSIDE Contactless is providing the PicoPass stickers and its Accesso® USB desktop contactless readers to offer contactless capabilities for ADELYA’s integrated Loyalty Operator Platform.  The PicoPass stickers are manufactured for INSIDE by FCI Microconnections.  In April, 2009, major retailer Tape à l'oeil deployed the ADELYA solution simultaneously in 130 outlets across France, and began deploying the contactless loyalty cards to its customers.

“With the capabilities of the PicoPass stickers, we are able to achieve a small revolution in the loyalty world, providing the ability to obtain quick, secure contactless identification for the customer, who retains full control and must provide permission for this to happen,” said Jean-François Novak, president of ADELYA.  “Unlike traditional loyalty cards, which are usually hidden in wallets and purses, branded stickers attached to mobile phones are highly visible symbols of the customers’ preference or affiliation. Aligned with our willingness to always provide the most advanced and relevant technologies to enhance loyalty effectiveness, ADELYA was first to introduce this new type of smart loyalty tag to the retail market through a close collaboration with INSIDE and FCI Microconnections.”

The first 100-percent web-based solution of its kind, the Loyalty Operator Platform incorporates a variety of digital marketing services for managing and operating customer loyalty and relationship.  The use of a contactless loyalty sticker is a true novelty for customers, offering them a completely interactive retail experience with instant identification at the point of sale, access to loyalty programs via mobile phone or PC, active participation in marketing activities and improved overall access to benefits.

The PicoPass stickers are part of a family of 13.56-MHz contactless memory chips available in 2K and 32K EEPROM configurations that support both ISO 14443/B and ISO 15693 protocols.  INSIDE is the leader in supporting open standard, dual-protocol applications with more than 105 million PicoPass chips deployed.  Selected by HID Corporation as the foundation for iClass® access control cards, PicoPass is rapidly becoming the open-standard, de facto contactless memory chip for dual-protocol use in access control, transit, low-end ID, retail loyalty, ticketing and other applications.