With the new service, ShopSavvy customers can immediately buy items through their PayPal account after they scan the product bar code with their mobile device’s camera. The launch is expected to go live before the major winter holidays.

Mobile Commerce Daily’s Chris Harnick interviewed Big in Japan cofounder Alexander Muse about the new service launch.

What’s the strategy here?
ShopSavvy allows a user to scan the bar code of any item to determine its availability and price from both online and local retailers. 

For the past year we have informed the shopper. With PayPal’s help, we can now empower the shopper to buy the products they want. 
                                             
What challenges does this address?
The biggest challenge from a payment point of view is that applications like ShopSavvy are not party to the transaction. 

We make it very easy to find the best deal on the products, but in the past, users were forced to visit the Web site of the retailer and complete a transaction using a small mobile screen. 

This was a rare occurrence.

By allowing ShopSavvy to connect the payment and the retailer from within the application the user can buy anything by pressing two buttons. 
 
What is the target demographic?
Smartphone users – iPhone and Android – who shop.
  

We believe it is. Today more than 1.1 million active ShopSavvy users scan an average of 26 products each month. The average price of the products is $30. 

If 1 percent of the users actually buy the items they scan using ShopSavvy, we will have a hundred-million-dollar business on our hands. 
 
Can you give me a little background on ShopSavvy?
We released ShopSavvy one year ago on the Android phone after winning Google’s Android Challenge to make the ‘coolest app’ for the operating system. 

Since then, millions of users in 26 different countries have downloaded the app.

This month Sprint and Verizon launch Android phones. 

Finally, ShopSavvy will be available for iPhone in the next week or two.