Supermarkets to offer "electronic wallet" to reduce small changes

Customers shopping in supermarkets often receive their small changes as a heap of coins. On June 17, Beijing Jingkelong Company Limited put forward an “excellent measure”: Starting from next month, 135 of the company’s supermarkets will formally launch an “electronic wallet” service for changes below 10 yuan. The small changes paying to customers will be deposited into customers’ membership cards, thus reducing the time of counting changes and queuing.

Membership cards have a new deposit function

“The ‘electronic wallet’ is actually quite simple; it is just a membership card with a newly-added deposit function.” An officer from Jingkelong explained it with an example: If the supermarket needs to pay 18.68 yuan change to a customer, the cashier will ask the customer whether they wish to deposit the change in the membership card. If the customer agrees, 0.68 yuan or 8.68 yuan change will be deposited into the customer’s membership card, and the cashier will only give the remaining part of the change in larger notes to the customer.

When customers go to the supermarket next time, they can use the money saved in their “electronic wallet.”

Changes up to 10 yuan can be deposited

Reporters learned that the pilot service was put into operation in a number of supermarkets last September, when changes below one yuan were deposited. Starting from next month, about 150 Jingkelong supermarkets will help customers deposit changes up to 10 yuan.

“The speed of checkout will increase by 60 percent.” The customer service manager from Jingkelong said that in the past, it usually took about 40 seconds for a customer to check out, but after the “electronic wallets” were adopted, the time was reduced to 10 seconds. Thus customers can save their queuing time while supermarkets can simplify their checkout procedures. The changes deposited in the membership card will remain valid, and cashiers will also proactively remind customers to use money saved in their cards first.

“It is quite convenient, and we don’t need to take home a heap of coins”. A customer Ms Liu said that in the past the coins she received from supermarkets were easily lost or saved in a money box, and thus were hardly used again.

Different methods to pay small changes

Different supermarkets in Beijing adopt different methods to handle the problem of paying small changes. Some supermarkets just give up charging small changes of less than 0.1 yuan, but most still pay customers accurate changes.

On June 17, an officer from Carrefour told reporters that at present all Carrefour supermarkets just give up charging customers the changes less than 0.1 yuan and the supermarkets absorb the differences. Wu Mart and Wal-Mart also said that either the changes are one fen or nine fens, their supermarkets will just give them up. But Lotus Center Supermarkets said changes more than three fens will be counted accurately. At present, in most supermarkets such as Ito Yokado and Shuntianfu small changes are still being counted accurately.

Translated by LOTO