Boost Retail Operations with Smartphone ID Scanning

| Products & Solutions , Retail

Scan passports instantly with Scandit technology

Seasonal purchasing times, like Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and the Holiday Season present crucial revenue opportunities for e-commerce and home delivery.

Doing this cleanly and efficiently does not just require more people. It means new tools and lots of them.

Here is where smartphone scanning can help.

By leveraging Scandit’s technology, any smartphone can potentially be turned into an enterprise-grade data capture device capable of a number of tasks. One of these is ID scanning.

Ways retailers can use smartphone scanning and text recognition

There are innumerable uses for ID scanning. From a retail perspective, here are some immediate ways that it can speed up processes:

Scan passports instantly with Scandit technologyID Documents with Machine Readable Zone

Age verification is another use case with numerous products restricted by age. ID verification with a smartphone is a great way to handle this in a contactless way that is safe for the employee and the customer.

ID Scanning is also crucial when it comes to the last mile and proof of delivery. A good example of this is age verified alcohol delivery – crucial in many markets including the US.

Smartphone scanning captures proof of delivery in a safe and contactless way.

This is very simple to implement with Scandit’s SDK equipped with ID Scanning, and it works with numerous forms of ID, as we’ll see below.

Retailers will need to bring additional staff to ramp up capacity in areas from order picking to delivery. For this, they can use ID scanning for employee onboarding.

Scandit and Text Recognition

By combining barcode scanning and text recognition technology, our ID scanning solution supports the following ID documents:

  • US, Canadian, and EU Drivers Licenses. We can scan the pdf 417 on the back or the text on the front. We also offer a comprehensive and fully maintained parser for the pdf 417. Our US Driving License scanning is considered best-in-class.
  • Passports. Here we can scan the Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) on any passport (the block of numbers and text below the image). This also works on ID cards in many countries.
  • ePassports/ eMRTD with RFID chips. ePassports are ICAO-standardized Passports with an RFID chip embedded.
  • Visa Stickers. Most visa stickers use an MRZ and can be scanned via the same process as a passport.
  • EU Drivers Licenses. Our SDK can read the text on the front of the driver’s license. In the EU example, this can capture address, age, and name.
  • US and EU Residence and Travel Cards. ID cards with an MRZ, as standardized by the ICAO, can be scanned in the same way as passports.

All of this is done using the smartphone camera and the phone’s processor. So there is no need to connect to an external database.

Our ID documentation database is continually updated. For example, we monitor changes to driver licenses in all US states so the parser your app uses is continuously updated. This sort of activity is replicated across all ID types.

Thanks to our new Barcode Scanner SDK, it is now easier than ever to add ID scanning to your apps. For the first time, the new 6.5 SDK release comes with its own ID scanning API to simplify the development process and require less code.

Scanning Drivers Licenses with a PDF417 BarcodeDrivers License with a PDF417 Barcode

Scandit’s ID scanning is supported on iOS and Android. While US drivers License ID scanning (use case 1 above) is also available on the Web SDK.

Real-world examples – from Instacart to Valora

Here are just a few examples of how retailers have been using Scandit’s ID verification in their applications.

Instacart – Age Verification and Proof of Delivery

Instacart uses Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK in its Instacart Shopper order picking app. The Instacart marketplace is supported by a community of hundreds of thousands of personal shoppers that handpick and deliver customer orders.

employee working serving sample food products

Instacart shoppers download the Instacart Shopper app onto their mobile device to accept, pick, and deliver customer orders. Recently, the store has seen notable growth in its delivery service in the wake of stay-at-home orders. And Scandit has allowed it to scale quickly and flexibly.

Here, ID scanning is used for age verification for home delivery and curbside pickup. It works in combination with the delivery label scan to alert the driver when verification is required.

Crucially, it records proof that the scan has been made correctly.

Valora – ID Scanning for self-checkout

Valora operates 2,700 small scale convenience stores across Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, offering fresh food and snacks. It brought in Scandit when launched Valora Avec, a 24/7 small-format store.

avecBox retail store using Scandit technology

To maximize space, Valora removed the checkout space and created a mobile self-scanning app to handle the payment. Scandit’s ID Scanning capabilities were used to allow customers to quickly onboard with a simple scan. It means a customer can signup up with a simple scan, and make a purchase through the app in just minutes.

Go live in less than four weeks

E-commerce and contactless shopping have been rising continually. In response, retailers have been slowly ramping up their dark store operations, IT systems, and delivery capacity.

However, despite this being a long-term trend – the pandemic has pushed this further than many have anticipated. For example, Salesforce this holiday shopping season will bring 30% global year-over-year growth in e-commerce.

With Scandit, additional capabilities like ID scanning and even a BYOD strategy allow retailers to scale up and down quickly and easily. We believe a store can do this in just a few weeks, from the initial decision to implementation.

Integrating the Scandit SDK is a very simple process. By doing so, your application will have access to both Scandit’s high-performance barcode scanning and ID scanning capabilities. If there are any issues, then our enterprise-level support can quickly put you back on the right track.

Integrating the Scandit SDK is a very simple process. By doing so, your application will have access to both Scandit’s high-performance barcode scanning and ID scanning capabilities.

So, whether it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or the New Year sales, don’t get caught out this holiday season. Implement smartphone scanning and ID scanning and make sure your systems and operations can handle the extra demand.

Contact us for more about Scandit’s ID scanning capabilities.