Last month in Umbria, and more precisely in Terni, the first completely “cashless” store was inaugurated; that is right, a supermarket without checkout counters and without cash payments. To jump the queue is many people’s desire, isn’t it? 

VivoGreen solved the problem with its “smart shopping”. 

Thanks to the support and technology of Nexi (a company that offers payment services) and thanks to the XPay service, we can talk about invisible payments. But how does this new system work? Customers register with VivoGreen by providing their data and receive a card to access the store. Then they go shopping, put all the products in the bag or shopping cart and simply pass through a sort of “gate” without queuing up. Here all the products are scanned and their price is charged directly to the customer’s credit card thanks to an Rfid technology. Easy, right? 

But that is not all, in case the customer is in a hurry, VivoGreen offers the possibility to order the products online (website, app, WhatsApp or phone) and collect them at VivoGreen Drive where the workers load the shopping directly into customer’s car. Home delivery service is another possibility, people receive their products comfortably at home by bike or electric car. 

VivoGreen will also become a meeting point and an educational shop where there will be conferences held by environmental experts, paediatricians and nutritionists. In addition, customers will have the opportunity to learn new simple and healthy recipes thanks to cooking classes organized inside the supermarket. 

Davide Milani, a professor in Terni, created this innovative shop which born as an educational project that involved four high schools. Milani said: “the idea is to create a shop of the future” and “to reduce waste, so those who shop in our supermarket find only compostable material or glass released on bail”. In fact, all the products are packaged with biocompatible, biodegradable and glass materials and this allows the philosophy of “the less I pollute, the less I pay”, that is, customers receive a reduction in the waste tax (TARI) thanks to an algorithm that calculates how many waste they produce. 

The store covers over 700 square meters and the collaboration with local producers helps to promote the excellence of the Umbrian territory. 

Dirk Pinamonti, head of Nexi e-commerce, said that “this is the first physical store in Italy based exclusively on invisible payments and we are extremely proud to have made it possible. We embraced the VivoGreen initiative because it is in line with our mission to offer increasingly practical and innovative shopping experiences, of which payment is an integral part. With VivoGreen we have moved from the experimentation phase to a concrete implementation”. 
 
Maybe this project will be the beginning of a future with more “green” supermarkets, with zero packaging, zero checkout counters and with “invisible payments” in our country.