Tesco has teamed with PowaTag to trial a mobile payment solution in its Dean Street Metro shop in Soho, London as a way of speeding up queues and transactions during the lunchtime rush.

Customers were encouraged to download the PowaTag app, assign their card details to it and then scan a QR code to instantly buy one of the supermarkets lunchtime meal offers. Tesco promoted the trial with a 30 Second Challenge which informed customers they could pick, pay and leave in 30 seconds.”

“This weeks event is a pilot for Tesco to see how well PowaTag performs before they decide how to move forwards,” said a PowaTag representative speaking to NFC World. “They picked the Dean Street store specifically because it has a very high customer throughput.”

“We are always testing new ideas to see how we can make the shopping experience better for our customers,” said a Tesco spokesperson. “We are currently conducting a week-long experiment in one store in order to see how we might speed up purchasing and reduce queuing time for customers, and will see how we could apply some [of] these learnings into future store, checkout and technology designs.”

The company has previously trialled an in-store scan and pay app called PayQwiq, calling the results “positive”.