Oil company Neste last week opened a fully automated Easy Deli store at a petrol station in the centre of Helsinki. The store uses RFID technology developed in Finland by Nordic ID.

The RFID technology scans all purchases made by the customer at once, for example through a shopping bag or a backpack. It is said to be the first self-service convenience store in Europe using RFID technology.

“Consumer shopping behaviour is changing rapidly,” said Jukka Peltoniemi, who is responsible for automated services at Neste. “We want to be part of this development and offer new kinds of smoother and faster customer experiences. The Easy Deli product scanner is the first of its kind in Finland and a huge leap forward compared to conventional self-checkouts. This makes the shopping experience much quicker and easier. The closest references are found in China where the RFID-based shops have received positive feedback for their user-friendliness.”

During this summer, Neste plans another Easy Deli store using the RFID technology in the Helsinki area. The company aims to open more 24-hour self-service stores in Riga, Latvia, this year.

Nordic ID developed RFID-based item tracking and tracing services for collecting product data. RFID technology allows individual products to be scanned without visual contact. As a result, a large number of products can be scanned in only a few seconds. Furthermore, there are less scanning errors, as not every product needs to be scanned separately.

“The idea for this was triggered by the changes in consumers’ shopping behaviour,” said Juuso Lehmuskoski, CEO of Nordic ID. “People want to go shopping when it suits them, close to their home and around the clock. They do not want to wait in line and may even abandon their purchases if the line is perceived too long. Using barcode-based self-checkouts may even take longer than traditional manned checkouts. Scanning the barcode of every product may be inconvenient for customers not familiar with the system, making purchasing even slower.”

In the retail industry, fashion and apparel were the first to adopt RFID technology. In addition to making shopping more precise and quicker, the technology enables anticipating and reducing food waste and preventing theft.

To enter the Easy Deli store in Ratakatu, customers start by registering in the Neste mobile app. This ensures secure shopping and prevents any misuse and vandalism.

After registering, shoppers pick out their products and place them on the RFID-based self-checkout, which scans all the products simultaneously in only a few seconds. Finally, they pay for their purchases using Apple Pay, Google Pay or a payment card.

“The Easy Deli concept was previously tested in Vantaa, Finland, with consumer experiences being encouraging,” Peltoniemi said. “In addition to quick and smooth shopping, the Easy Deli store is versatile thanks to its mobility. The store can be set up quickly without any construction or excavation work. It has been built using sustainable and eco-friendly materials, and its energy consumption has already been minimised during the building stage. If there is enough demand in the market, we could expand the shop concept in new locations.”

Nordic ID is a full service PaaS (platform-as-a-service) company. It has RFID tracking devices and a customisable, adaptable cloud platform.

” We have worked closely together with Neste to develop their automated Easy Deli self-service store,” said Lehmuskoski. “Cooperation on developing this service concept have been highly rewarding and fruitful, but also required quite some problem-solving skills of us. I am very proud of our team, knowhow, and the fact that we have been part of creating this new shopping concept that provides a contemporary and updated customer experience. In uncertain times, winners will be the ones who are able to transform their business to best meet the changed consumer expectations.”

For automated self-service shops, RFID provides many benefits over camera or scale technology-based methods. Nordic ID’s unmanned shop concept S/Mart enables agile customisation of the store set-up according to customer needs and even fits the budget of smaller retailers.

Deployment and maintenance are said to be seamless and cost efficient. In addition, shop assortment and floor plan are easily modified when needed. Thanks to the adaptive concept, S/Marts fit the environments such as hotels, self-storage warehouses and business hotels.