Member Article

Enfield's 700-year old market taps into 'payment revolution'

Enfield Market has secured a new partnership that will help it embark on a new ‘payment revolution’ as part of a campaign to encourage people to buy local and independent.

The market, which is over 700-years old, has become the first venue of its kind in the country to encourage its 40-strong army of traders to adopt Droplet, a mobile payment and loyalty app.

Droplet removes costly transaction fees associated with cards and offers shoppers the opportunity to pay by one simple touch of their phone – removing the need to bring cash out with them or the tiresome process of finding an ATM.

In a more recent advancement, Droplet is now offering all merchants a loyalty platform so that they can offer customers the opportunity to collect rewards with every purchase they make.

More than 25 traders have already signed up and been trained to use the iOS and Android app, with the remaining 15 set to be operational by early 2016.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for Droplet to make a real difference to the recently re-launched Enfield Market,” explained Michael Saunders, who is responsible for rolling the app out across London.

“As soon as I met Ellie Gill from ‘Love Your Local Market’ and The Old Enfield Charitable Trust – the organisation responsible for the regeneration – I knew it would be a perfect match. They wanted to create a vibrant new market experience that focused on buying local and encouraging people to regularly use independents rather than big high street names. We’re just giving them the tools to achieve that!”

He continued: “Traders really like the concept. Yes, it saves them money as they don’t have to worry about card fees, but it’s much more than that. Each business has its own profile page to help with marketing and – through the loyalty platform – can understand the buying habits of regular customers, tailoring special offers or incentives direct to their phone.

“By the beginning of the year, this will be our biggest concentration of Droplet merchants in the UK, quite appropriate that a new payment app is extremely popular in the place where the first ever ATM was installed.”

Set against the architecture of the 14th Century St Andrews Church and Grade II listed Kings Head pub, Enfield Market was re-launched on October 1st following major regeneration work.

It secured 100% occupancy from 40 traders before it officially opened and these range from food artisans, craft specialists and independent fashion retailers to retro music sellers, second hand books and those selling household staples.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .