Mobile application
Circle K
The project
CircleK, a sister company to the Quebec giant Couche-Tard, devised a way to reduce wait time at their European gas stations; they call it Pay by Plate. It’s a frictionless payment experience based on video recognition of license plates. CircleK approached us to develop the mobile app component of the experience which consists of the user entering their license plate and a payment method in the app before visiting the gas station. Once at the station, the license plate is recognized, the pump is unlocked and all that’s left to do is tank up before driving away.
The challenges
This project has yet to go past the proof of concept stage and is only available in a few European gas stations. That being said, it’s making good progress and is only a few enhancements away from becoming globally available in all CircleK stations. It’s been submitted to a rigorous client validation program and although the visual recognition system is flawless, it’s not enough to prove that the user is really on-site (someone else could be behind the wheel). We need to complement that system with other technologies such as geolocation, geofencing as well as silent and non-silent push notifications in order to prove without any doubt that the mobile device linked to the license plate and payment methods is indeed in the pocket of the person fuelling their vehicle.This project is the humble beginning of something that has immense potential, exactly what we love in an innovative project.
Mobile
A Monorepo Architecture to Support Multiple Innovations
CircleK and Thirdbridge’s collaboration is not limited to a single project. The Pay by Plate system is only a fraction of a much bigger project we work on with this multinational retail company. Our team also works on the official North American CircleK mobile app. This software has been developed in modules, each one supporting a single innovative CircleK feature. To do so, we use a monorepo architecture which is a single repository that stores all of your code and assets for every initiative. This allows us to easily select or ignore any feature depending on its availability in relation to the user’s geographical location.
See more
Our other projects
