The summer months are a busy time for innovation at Carrefour Spain. Find out about the latest initiatives bolstering Carrefour's expertise when it comes to innovation.

 

Mobile top-up payment

Carrefour Spain is the first and only national retailer to offer a global mobile top-up solution to all Carrefour PASS card-holding customers. In this way, Carrefour Spain makes mobile top-up payment more egalitarian and goes a step further in defence of its customers’ freedom of choice, as any user can do this from any bank and for any mobile* inside and outside Carrefour.
After the launch of Apple Pay last December, Carrefour Spain pioneered the development of a mobile top-up solution for Android on its own APP, making it the only retailer in Spain to offer this service, which can now be used by over two million customers.
Carrefour Spain was also a pioneer in offering its PASS customers the option of payment via mobile phone at Carrefour petrol stations without having to get out of their vehicles, and is the only retailer to offer Apple Pay to its customers.
The Carrefour PASS card is entirely free and universal and is currently held by two million customers who, via the Carrefour Pass APP (that has now been downloaded half a million times), can use their mobile phones to monitor all operations and personal finance carried out using the card, for example, consulting movements and balance, methods of payment and accumulated discounts.
The card also offers interest free financing of purchases made from Carrefour and a permanent loyalty programme whereby customers receive money for their purchases via ChequeAhorro vouchers.


Bodega Online, a new experience serving customers

Bodega Online: the new online wine store launched by Carrefour in July.  Carrefour Spain is a leading name in e-commerce, with 120 million visitors, more than half a million listed products and one million products purchased every year from its online store. Customers can choose from around a thousand wines of all types and categories at Carrefour's online wine store. And that's not all: they can also find a wide selection of spirits, aperitifs and accessories. Bodega also wants to give them the same expertise as they would find at a traditional wine store, sharing advice and information about various grape varieties and special details about each cellar. This way, customers will be to find the wine which most perfectly meets their requirements, while becoming experts along the way.

The wine store has a warehouse in Alcobendas, specially adapted for storing and preserving these wines. But this new online service has other assets as well: delivery costs are the cheapest on the market, and delivery times are between 48 and 72 hours.  Over the next few months, coverage will be extended to all of Spain and Portugal. Also worth mentioning are the special features of the packaging used to send the wine: a system of flaps protects the bottles in transit. With this new online service, Carrefour Spain is proving its continuing commitment to innovation and shoring up its position as a major player on the Spanish e-commerce scene.
 

Innovation Center CiC

Only a stone’s throw from Carrefour Spain's central head office, the brand-new Innovation Center CiC sets out to make teams' workflows smoother and ensure that they can respond as quickly as possible to consumers' new demands as they make their online purchases. All this in a place that has been completely designed for that very purpose: open space office setup, no cables, co-working, innovation and a number of cross-functional roles gather together in the same working area to improve the flow of information passed on from customers and increase efficiency.

Recently, this new centre, which sports Carrefour Spain's name, welcomed a VIP – Madrid's mayor, Manuela Carmena. She visited the site to see for herself the innovations that had been designed and created by the Group's Spanish team. The mayor was welcomed by Pascal Clouard, Executive Director for Carrefour Spain, and by Carrefour Spain's whole management team. The mayor highlighted Carrefour Spain's dynamic approach to innovation and its ongoing commitment to improving the working conditions of its employees.

 
Pepper at the beach

A pioneering company in using robotics for fun, Carrefour Spain has organised a tour for Pepper the robot. Until the end of the year, he'll be visiting 36 hypermarkets in 17 provinces across Spain.
Pepper's journey is currently taking him through the country’s beach resorts.
In each town or city he visits, Pepper visits 3 stores so he can present 3 events to different customers: Pepper hola welcomes customers and – with the aid of an integrated tablet computer – provides customers with information about special offers, discounts and the MiCarrefour application. Pepper diversión has fun features and functions so he can interact with children using games and dances. He can also take selfies and conduct short conversations. And Pepper bodega provides information about Carrefour's selection of wines.

Pepper has been on the road since March 2017 and is evidence of Carrefour's ongoing commitment to using innovation to improve its customers' purchasing experience. The experiences customers can enjoy in the fun world of robotics form part of these innovative initiatives developed by the company.