Japanese smartphone app allows you to shop like the King of Pop

TOKYO — In the 2003 documentary Living With Michael Jackson, the late King of Pop was filmed shopping for art and furniture in a Las Vegas store, pointing at things he liked and walking out, leaving his handlers to settle the bill. Now, a startup in Japan is trying to make that retail experience a reality for everyone.

Primo’s app lets users skip the checkout line by using their smartphones. A scan of a QR code instantly completes a purchase. The eight-person start-up is betting that businesses will sign up for the service. Since debuting in October, Primo has attracted 90 merchants in Japan, including a craft chocolate maker, the preferred tea brand of Japan’s imperial family and high-end audio-equipment maker Bang & Olufsen.

“You don’t have to be a billionaire to shop like this,” said Mr Abasa Phillips, founder of Tokyo-based Primo Inc. “A lot of companies are working on optimising the register, but the problem is the 10 to 15-minute wait before the purchase.”

While it may seem like online shopping is taking over retail these days, e-commerce is still just a fraction of in-store sales, accounting for less than 10 per cent of merchandising in the United States. That fact has not been lost on Amazon.com Inc, which in December unveiled a concept store that will let shoppers grab groceries and leave without having to go through a checkout line or scan them at all.

Primo argues that its QR tags are cheaper and easier to deploy, and can be read by any smartphone camera. While QR codes are not that common in the United States and Europe, they are everywhere in Japan, China and other parts of Asia. 

Promoted by Tencent Holdings’ WeChat messenger, the tags were quickly picked up by China’s tech giants Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu, used for everything from sharing contacts to paying for taxi rides.

“Most tech companies tend to want to use the newest thing out there, so they kind of skipped over this use case for QR codes,” Mr Phillips said at an interview. 

“You really see the potential in China, where every store, every product and every business card has a QR code on it.”

Mr Phillips, originally from Philadelphia, has lived in Japan for more than a decade, working in personal wealth management and digital payments. The 40-year-old was an early bitcoin adopter and started a virtual-currency wallet service that stumbled when the Tokyo-based Mt Gox exchange collapsed in 2014.

Primo is testing the technology in a 24-hour pop-up shop this week, offering about 20 brands and products ranging from environmentally friendly detergent to organic tea and Japanese sake. The company takes 10 per cent of each transaction, including credit-card fees.

“It seems very convenient, and I like their product selection,’’ said Mr Darren Yeo, 28, a tourist from Singapore. “The downside is you still have to download the app.”

In December, the app was featured on ProductHunt, a US online bulletin board for early adopters of new apps, services and gadgets.

Primo is now looking to raise US$1 million (S$1.41 million) in a seed-funding round to speed up integration with online merchants and expand into the US. One way or another, Mr Phillips is betting that, someday, everyone will shop like Michael Jackson.

“The shopping experiences on mobile are still quite clunky, and the reason is because it’s completely separate from payment,” he said. “We bring it closer to one tap and you’re done.” BLOOMBERG