PayPal enables offline stores to be open 24/24 with holograms

Hologram + smartphone = real window shopping

The new concept integrates the online and the offline: a hologram is
projected on the store window, including a code that the consumer has to
dial with his smartphone – so the new technology might be either an
alternative for QR-codes, or it might evolve to include them.

After the code is entered, the smartphone is synchronised with the
hologram and the customer can browse the catalogue or look for more
information about the products (simultaneously on the window and on the
phone)… and – of course – order items through PayPal (on the
smartphone only). For obvious reasons, the payment module is not shown
on the store display too.

First real application: next month

The world première for the new technology is scheduled for February, in
the windows of fashion chain Debenhams and at the London Fashion Week
(17-22 February) in Oxford Street, the main shopping street in the
British capital.

Eelco Van Wijk, PayPal’s country director for Belgium and the
Netherlands, thinks beyond store windows: “Bus stations and taxis are
also very interesting for this technology. As is virtually anything that
you can see, actually.”

As eBay already showed with its own Inspiration Store, it will leave no
possibility squandered to make the most of any impulsive purchases. This
new technology will certainly help 
them to provoke even more. The
concept is not completely new: Tesco earlier introduced a similar system
(but with “normal” paper posters instead of holograms) in a
South-Korean subway station.