X5 Retail Group, the company that runs Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, and Carousel supermarket chains, recently announced that Carousel was about to re-launch its customer loyalty program through offering its Magic Card discount cards for sale.

As it happens, Yekaterinburg-based Carousel supermarkets located in Park House and Alatyr malls stopped accepting the regular customer cards in March 2010, despite the fact that the customers had actually paid to get them.

At first, the new loyalty scheme will only be available in Moscow and Moscow Region; by the summer of 2010, the scheme will be fully functioning in all the Russian cities with a Carousel supermarket. Now X5 Retail Group operates sixty such stores in Russia (as of March 31, 2010).