McDonalds commence l'épreuve de RFID en Corée

Evan Schuman

McDonalds expérimente avec le ligne-type final en Corée du Sud, où les clients achètent la nourriture sur leurs téléphones portables, qui sonnent alors quand l'ordre est prêt.

Mais cette épreuve est beaucoup plus un effort de RFID qu'une expérience mobile traditionnelle. La majeure partie des possibilités des communications du téléphone et de son affichage est à peine employée, avec des clients devant télécharger une application de McDonalds dans leur téléphone.

« À chaque table, il y a un lecteur de RFID et un menu qui a les morceaux intégrés de RFID. Customers plug the reader into their mobile phones and point them at the item on the menu that they wish to eat or drink,” said a story in The Korea Times.

“The bill is charged through the mobile phone. When the meal is ready, the system sends a short message to the phone so the customer can pick up the ready tray at a designated counter.”

The trial is being managed by McDonalds and South Korea’s SK Telecom, which has dubbed the effort the “Touch Order” menu. It was unveiled at McDonald’s Shinchon branch in western Seoul near Yonsei University.

The McDonalds trial is interesting, if for no other reason than it is demonstrating yet another way to deploy mobile commerce. Some use the phone’s calling capabilities and screen while others leverage the phone’s digital camera to do some 2D barcode-selling.

Payments can be handled through the cell phone’s number—as McDonalds is apparently doing in the South Korea trial—or through an embedded RFID chip, which turns the smartphone into something akin to a contactless credit card.

The McDonalds trial does this one step better, using an RFID interface through a physical plug-in but not at all for payment.

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