Aurora Fashions and Karen Millen announced today (30 May) that it will begin accepting payments using PayPal through customers’ smartphones.
Aurora Fashions and Karen Millen announced today (30 May) that it will begin accepting payments using PayPal through customers’ smartphones.
Aurora Fashions, the parent company of Oasis, Warehouse and Coast, and Karen Millen has teamed up with PayPal to let customers use PayPal’s inStore app to pay for purchases on their mobile instore.
The service, which launches nationally at all four retailers from tomorrow (May 31), and will be available in some 230 stores. It uses the PayPal inStore app, which provides the customer with a unique barcode and transaction number, which the shop cashier scans to take payment from the customer’s PayPal account. Payments, refunds and discounts are all managed via the app.
“Customers demand more from physical stores: outstanding service and a more personalised experience enabled by new technology,” said Ish Patel group omnichannel director at Aurora Fashions. ”Catering for payment flexibility is a now a crucial part of ensuring we are providing customers with a seamless experience by merging digital commerce with physical retailing.
“Our partnership with PayPal allows us to take the next step in our omnichannel journey, ensuring customers can safely and securely purchase items using their own mobile phones. We’re proud to be innovating on the UK high street and continuing to lead the way in providing a new kind of shopping experience.”
PayPal UK managing director Cameron McLean says the move underlines the company’s view that mobile payments don’t need near field communications technology to succeed. “We’ve created a simple, secure way to use a mobile phone to pay in your favourite stores. The lines between the online world and high street will soon disappear altogether: research we carried out last year among major retailers suggested that 2016 will be the year you won’t need a wallet to shop on the British high street. A phone will be enough,” said Cameron.
“PayPal’s ‘pay by mobile’ service works with the phones most of our customers already own. And our retail partner doesn’t have to install new systems to take in-store mobile payments,” he said.
Payments, refunds and discounts are all managed via the app. PayPal claims it is a secure way of carrying out a transaction as the customer enters a PIN to open the app and no personal or financial information is stored on the phone.
The app works when there is no mobile or Wi-Fi signal and the customer can also request a refund from purchases online or instore via the app.
The PayPal app is available for Android and Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices.