Shoppers will soon be able to pay for items directly from the fitting room by tapping their NFC-equipped mobile phones at a virtual checkout located on a contactless mirror developed by San Francisco innovation outfit Oak Labs.
Created in 2015 by the founders of eBay’s Retail Innovation division, the first iteration of Oak Labs touch-screen mirror is currently available in select retail locations worldwide, including Polo Ralph Lauren, Gerry Weber, and Rebecca Minkoff stores.
It replaces a standard fitting room mirror with additional, interactive features, including embedded RFID reading technology which displays items brought into the fitting rooms and enables customers to request alternate colours or sizes, and view recommended looks.
All requests made by the customer are notified to sales staff via a mobile app. Staff respond to a shopper’s request with a friendly note that appears on the mirror (eg “On my way!”) alongside their name and photo.
The new check-out feature, powered by DotDashPay, now enables customers to pay for their items in the fitting room, skipping the queues at the instore cashier. Oak Checkout works with contactless payments from Apple Pay, Android Pay and most mobile wallet applications
Healey Cypher, Oak Labs co-founder and CEO, says: “Oak Checkout is an important indicator of the future of retail. Adding one-tap checkout within the Oak Mirror means we now ameliorate three of the primary points of friction in the physical retail environment: trying on clothing, requesting new items to try on, and waiting in line to make a purchase.”