Walk the NRF or EuroShop show floors and you’ll hear the same questions surface again and again: How do we create more meaningful in-store experiences? How do we personalize without friction? How do we connect physical retail to the intelligence and convenience customers expect online?
A powerful part of the answer is coming to your customer’s pocket in the very near future.
As smartphones evolve to include RAIN RFID reader functionality, they will unlock a new layer of item-level intelligence that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the in-store experience. When consumers can use their own devices to identify, locate, and interact with RAIN-tagged products, physical retail gains many of the strengths of digital commerce, without losing what makes stores uniquely valuable.
A New Kind of In-Store Experience
Imagine a customer walking into a store and opening the retailer’s app. As they move through the aisles, products are no longer silent. A simple scan reveals rich, curated information: where an item was made, what materials it contains, whether their size is available nearby, or how it compares to similar products they’ve previously browsed or purchased.
That same interaction enables intelligent recommendations—suggested pairings, higher-value alternatives, or loyalty offers—delivered in real time, based on the customer’s actual behavior in the store. The result is an experience that feels informed, relevant, and personal, while keeping the tactile and exploratory qualities of physical retail.
For customers, this means greater confidence and convenience. For retailers, it means something equally powerful: a new channel for understanding how shoppers engage with products in the physical world.
Turning Browsing Into Insight
Today, retailers have deep visibility into online behavior but far less clarity inside the store. RAIN-enabled smartphones begin to close that gap.
Every interaction—what a customer picks up, how long they linger, which products they return to but don’t buy—can help inform a richer picture of intent. Over time, these signals enhance individual customer profiles and support more accurate personalization, smarter loyalty strategies, and better decision-making across marketing, merchandising, and store operations.
This intelligence doesn’t just benefit one-to-one engagement. Aggregated insights can inform store layout, assortment planning, promotional effectiveness, and even how digital interfaces and AI assistants communicate with different customer segments. Physical retail becomes measurable in new ways, while at the same time enhancing the customer experience.
Frictionless Moments That Matter
RAIN-enabled smartphones also open the door to reducing friction at key moments in the shopping journey.
Push notifications alert customers when favorite items are available nearby, when something they previously browsed online is in stock, or when a timely incentive might help them make a decision. Highly targeted offers are delivered dynamically, perhaps a personalized discount triggered by repeated interest in a product, or a complementary recommendation surfaced at just the right moment.
At checkout, the experience becomes faster and more flexible. Customers scan and pay via the retailer’s app, skipping checkout lines entirely. For retailers, this means sales uplift, better staff utilization, and a smoother path to purchase.
Transparency, Sustainability, and Trust
Beyond convenience and personalization, RAIN-enabled smartphones support growing consumer expectations around transparency and sustainability.
Product composition, provenance, care instructions, and recyclability can be made instantly accessible, supporting Digital Product Passport initiatives and more informed purchasing decisions. This information remains available long after packaging or paper leaflets are discarded, strengthening trust and extending the relationship between people and products beyond the point of sale.
A Foundation Already in Place
What makes this vision particularly compelling is how much of the groundwork already exists. Billions of products around the world are already tagged with RAIN technology. Billions of consumers already carry smartphones everywhere they go.
Integrating RAIN RFID reader functionality into consumer devices has the potential to universalize item-level intelligence at global scale—connecting products, customers, and data in ways that were previously impractical or impossible.
Aligning the Ecosystem Around What’s Next
Of course, unlocking this future requires alignment across a diverse ecosystem: retailers, smartphone OEMs, app developers, and technology partners. Without shared standards and a clear understanding of the commercial opportunity, innovation slows and investment becomes harder to justify.
Part of the work of the RAIN Alliance is to help bring that alignment together by simplifying, standardizing, and accelerating adoption through collaboration.
See You at NRF and EuroShop
As conversations at NRF and EuroShop increasingly focus on AI, personalization, and the future of omnichannel retail, RAIN-enabled smartphones offer a practical, scalable way to bring those ambitions into the physical store. They create a bridge between digital intelligence and real-world interaction—one that enhances customer experience, deepens insight, and drives measurable value.
The future of retail won’t be built by technology alone, but by ecosystems that move together. At NRF and EuroShop 2026, that future is closer—and more tangible—than ever.