Retailer-owned mobile payments provider Yapital is to add “one click” purchases from printed advertising media to its app, enabling shoppers to order and pay for promoted products by scanning QR codes in merchants’ billboard and newspaper ads, flyers and shop window decals.

A subsidiary of Germany-based international retailer Otto Group, Yapital can already be used to make mobile payments in a number of retail chains in Germany including Rewe Group supermarkets, Gortz, Novum Hotels and European Games Group as well as the Otto-owned SportScheck, Baur, and Arqueonautas chains. Yapital can also be used to make payments online.

In brick and mortar stores mobile payments are made using QR codes. Payments via Bluetooth LE are also being introduced. Customers download the Yapital app and load funds into a prepaid Yapital account using their preferred payment method. At the checkout, the cashier clicks a ‘pay with Yapital’ button on the POS system to generate and display a QR code that the customer scans with their mobile phone. They then check the amount to be paid, confirm the transaction and receive an electronic receipt that is stored in the Yapital app.

The new service will enable merchants to use their Yapital dashboard to generate QR codes for individual items. These can then be included on printed media so that shoppers can both order and pay for an item by scanning the code with the Yapital app “all with one click”.

“As early as this summer, the first of our business partners will be offering this ‘instant order’ method to their customers,” says Yapital chairman Nils Winkler. “This will allow merchants to take a completely new approach to their marketing campaigns and generate orders directly from their advertising space. As a result, shopping will be more straightforward, more intuitive, and more personalised for the customers than ever before.”