Citi is testing a new app feature called ‘Scan & Buy’. They call it a visual search tool and it works as follows:
- Take a picture of the item you want to purchase or the barcode of an item you want to purchase
- ???
- ‘Sit back & enjoy the results’
Based on the name I thought this would be a mobile payments feature, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. How useful the tool is will really depend on the type of pricing data it brings back and how accurate it is in determining your item. If I was looking for something very specific and I didn’t know exactly what it was called and this feature could identify it then I can see it being useful, otherwise I’d definitely need some incentive to use it. Definitely not as exciting as the new Citi card launching soon.
