Finally, the future is here.
Open my wallet, and what will you find? A few crumpled notes, a driver’s licence, some stamps, a Cafe Sol loyalty card, a Lemon Coffee Co. loyalty card, a Bagel Factory “bagel” loyalty card, a Bagel Factory “coffee” loyalty card, a Tesco Clubcard (actually, two – one credit-card-sized and one key-fob-sized), a Waterstones loyalty card and a Coffee 2 Go loyalty card.
You get the picture. In addition, I count myself fortunate to be male; if I was female, I could add a Boots card, a credit note for River Island as well as various other cards from various other supermarkets, because women do sensible things such as shop around, or visit Superquinn for fresh fish and Fresh for warm bread from the oven.
Enter ZAPA TAG TM.
Yep: shite name and rubbish advertising, but a great idea. Zapa Tag is an adhesive chip you are advised to stick on your phone (because you never forget your phone! Please, you can survive without a phone, but try lacking a wallet for more than 5 minutes!) Then, at participating outlets, you simply tap your tag against a reader to earn electronically stored points. Also, register on www.zapatag.ie and check your account balance at your leisure. How suitably modern! (However, do not confuse with zapatag.com, which is a website dedicated to naming and shaming bad drivers by posting their licence plate on the internet. An absolute stroke of genius!)
Currently the only participating shop is Insomnia, but on finding that I couldn’t collect points on my regular “Coffee + Pannini = €6″ lunchtime offer, I peeled the tag off my phone before investigating its insides and discarding it. Beneath the tacky exterior it looks like the innards of an HMV security tag, if you were wondering.
However, if companies begin to outsource their loyalty card scheme to Zapa Tag we, the coffee drinking, grocery shopping, iPod toting, novel devouring public are on to a winner. Zapa Tag will even store your accounts separately, so HMV won’t have to give away free cds because you single-handedly keep Peru’s coffee business alive. No more trimming paper cards that don’t quite fit into your wallet. No more mysteriously losing your fully stamped Cafe Sol card on the way to the shop. No more carrying 8 cards with one stamp each, arguing that they add up to one free bagel.
ZAPA TAG TM : bringing Dublin into the next decade.
Personally, I’m waiting for RFID chips to make their way into everything I buy. That way, Primark can tell me when I walk in the door that my underwear is 2 years old and probably needs replaced.
That’s like having all the downsides of a girlfriend, and no upsides. I’m not convinced!