Mastercard Reduces In-store 'Traffic Jams' with Data-driven Tool 'Safe Waze 2 Shop'

Mastercard Poland, together with McCann Warsaw and McCann Toronto, created a data-driven tool allowing consumers to skip instore jams.

Safe Waze 2 Shop was created in partnership with Waze, and helps drivers avoid crowded stores and stay safe during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Instead of using its most common function – avoiding traffic jams – Mastercard decided to go one step further by using Waze to avoid instore traffic jams and keep supermarkets a safe place to visit. 

Using Mastercard’s proprietary information on consumer spending trends, aggregated and anonymised in line with Mastercard's secure data processing principles, Waze directs customers to stores with fewer people and shows them the safest hours to shop.

And it worked! The Waze navigation rate – the number of drivers exposed to the solution who changed their destination – reached 12.9%. When implemented in all +900 Carrefour supermarkets in Poland, the tool generated a 65,000 increase in transactions in one month.

Check the online platform here.

“We started from some alarming data – according to PHE test and trace data, especially in the beginning of the pandemic, shops were the #1 place to be exposed to Covid 19*. Also, in the USA only, according to the Journal Occupation & Environmental Medicine, 20% of supermarket employees tested positive for Covid 19, making this category of employees a very exposed one and in need of help. In line with Mastercard’s mission – doing well by doing good – we wanted to give a helping hand to our business partners and also to keep consumers safe, so we partnered with Carrefour stores across Poland and with Waze to guide people to the store with lower traffic. To incentivise them, we created special promos in the Priceless Moments loyalty program that were only accessible in the morning, less crowded hours.. Thanks to the scalability of the tool and ease of implementation, we are now working with  other retailers for a safer and more convenient way of shopping also in the months and years to come,” said Jerzy Holub, marketing director Poland, Mastercard Europe.

“Working under pandemic pressure to turn data into a user friendly tool was a fascinating experience. Mastercard is a global tech company, yet it has the ability to switch to startup mode and act really fast. Looking at the results and seeing the program developing is a good forecast for safer future,” said Bartek Klimaszewski, creative director, McCann Warsaw.