Power bank sharing

The RIC platform can help you permanently free an active person from the socket by providing an informational basis for power bank sharing.

On its basis, you can organize a service that allows you to rent a source of energy to charge your mobile device in any of the public places nearby and return it to another one.

Where can be applied

Cafe

Service may be in demand in those places where we don’t spend so much time to charge our gadget. For example, in cafes and restaurants, where the user can stop for fifteen minutes. This time is not enough to fully charge the gadget – it is better to take a power bank with you. Owners of chains of restaurants, cafes and shops can use our service, not only receiving additional income, but also additional advertising of their brand in the mobile application.

Parks and open spaces

Potential users of the service can also be found in parks or exhibition halls. In these places, a person is not in one place, and, if necessary, will use the service by taking a power bank with him. The event organizer or sponsor gets the opportunity to attract attention and subsequently draw the user’s attention to their activities.

Metro and parking

Metro and parking stations, where gadget owners appear regularly, but for a short time, can serve as an ideal business platform for sharing bank services. The user can take the power bank at one station and return it to another, charging his device during the journey. On the other hand – take the source of energy for your gadget leaving the subway, and at the entrance to the same station or to another – return the power bank. Owners of parking lots, as well as the subway, have the opportunity to increase their popularity and attractiveness for customers and passengers.

Effect of the implementation

The franchise service is interesting for our partners as an additional source of income, which allows them to get a new platform for advertising their main business. By that to attract an additional audience and get new clients.

The partner can choose equipment from different manufacturers – they are all supported by the system.

The service contains exhaustive information about the place where the service point is located. With the help of the service, the partner gets the opportunity to inform his customers about the schedule, ongoing promotions, changes and news.

Case №1: power bank sharing in Amsterdam

We tried to make the service interesting not only for the end-user, but also for our partners. In the future, it can be supplemented with the functions of organizing various partner programs — discounts for a cup of coffee or sitting next to the aquarium for rent and many others.

Consider a scenario of using the system. The user, using a mobile application, finds a location with charged banks (see figure 1). Powerbox gives information about the available slots, one of which will be open. After clicking the “Rent” button, the issuance procedure is started – this means that within a minute the user must inspect the device and remove it from charging. If everything is okay, he confirms the rental in the application and starts the timer.

Otherwise, the client returns the power bank and marks the slot defective, after which he will be provided with another slot with the bank.

The mobile application will help to indicate the cause of the problem by selecting template messages and the ability to attach a photo.

The bank can be returned after use in two ways: by performing a return procedure via the mobile application, or by pressing a button on a powerbox, if you are in a close proximity to this powerbox. Rent stops automatically when the power bank is set to charge and the slot is closed.

The rental price is 1 euro per hour, but not more than 4 euro per day. If the client leaves the bank to himself, then having accumulated a payment amount of 32 euros in daily payments, he pays the full cost of the device. Rent after this will be automatically interrupted.

We tried to make the service interesting not only for the end-user, but also for our partners. In the future, it can be supplemented with the functions of organizing various partner programs — discounts for a cup of coffee or sitting next to the aquarium for rent and many others.

Powerbanks-RIC-1

The business owner can be sure that the bank that was rented was returned. We control it by a unique identifier. If an exchange was made between users, the rental of one of them will be closed only when the other returns the battery with the corresponding identifier to the system.

Powerbanks-RIC-2

To make the service convenient, we implemented a real-time information exchange. Both by request and using the schedule, the system receives data on the occupied slots and the charge level on each of them. As necessary, there is an exchange of commands for the issuance of a bank and for its reception in a free slot.