Category: Technology | Page 5

Visa Offering More Goodies For PF Merchant Magicians

When Visa on Tuesday (Feb. 9) officially rolled out its Visa Consumer Transaction Controls program, it provided puzzle pieces that payment facilitators are much better positioned to use than others in the payments arena.

What the program does is it allows account holders “to set simple, convenient, and effective spending controls, receive transaction alerts, or even temporarily suspend their accounts using a simple on/off feature,” Visa said. “Spending controls can be applied to different transaction types, date ranges, or overall card spending to offer consumers visibility and control over their money. Alerts can be sent by text, mobile app, or email in when transactions take place.” The magic is that these are capabilities that Visa will support, but others will have to put the programming effort into integrating these apps, mobile devices and anything else. The apps that PF merchants will be using can leverage these or not. Few merchants will see much reason to put in the development talent to make them happen as they don’t directly boost sales. That’s where PF magic comes in.

Apple Envisions P2P In Every Possible Way

With Apple’s P2P rollout and partnerships getting closer, it’s not surprising that Apple was granted a Patent for the approach last month. But what was not expected was how inclusive and extensive Cupertino envisions P2P being, with the capability integrated into almost every iPhone function.

“It’s clear that Apple is planning to provide an OS-wide payments integration that provides merchants with marketing benefits such as the ability to promote certain deals directly into the OS, such as geo-location based promotions into Maps, or via e-mails or instant messages, all with the ability to compete purchase/pre-order with one click based on Apple Pay enrollment and identity information stored on the device,” said Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst with payments consulting firm Double Diamond Group, Oglesby argues that this is the logical next move for Apple, as Apple Pay moves into its second-year year with growing market maturity and acceptance.

Why Are Merchants So Afraid Of Mobile Payments?

With all of the hoopla surrounding mobile payments, there is often little attention paid to the pragmatic obstacles faced by retailers in the field. And those obstacles are causing a river of fear, loathing and more fear among merchants when they consider mobile payments. Today, the ease in which a customer can order a pizza is becoming almost as important as the recipe for the sauce. But when it comes to mobile, it’s all about ordering, loyalty, and offers—pretty much everything but payment. Why is payment not top of mind? From the chain’s perspective, it’s an ugly topics about increased costs and added complexities. For many of my restaurant clients, mobile payments cause more problems than it solves.

Let’s not beat around the bush: there is loathing among the restaurant industry when it comes to payment card processing and the associated costs. They still are angry about EMV. I am constantly being asked what can be done with technology to reduce or mitigate these costs. “Can the delivery driver swipe a card at the customer’s door? Will that help? If the customer orders online, but picks up their pizza in the restaurant, can we just authorize the transaction online and then cancel it and re-do it in the restaurant to get a card present rate? Can we look at alternative forms of payment that will reduce our overall payment processing costs?” And while these are all good ideas, each one comes with technical and operational challenges that are non-trivial and, in some cases, can make the situation worse than before.

Deloitte: Ignorance Isn’t Bliss. It’s Killing Mobile Payments

On Wednesday (Dec. 9), Deloitte released a major mobile report and concluded that mobile payments is suffering from a payments industry self-inflicted wound: an almost criminal lack of shopper and store associate education about mobile payments.

This is one of those good news/bad news situations. The good news is if the payments industry leaders act smart, this problem can not only be solved, but reversed. Consumer and store employee education will sharply boost mobile payments usage—and that will on top of a continual influx of new mobile shoppers as more people upgrade to NFC-friendly smartphones. The bad news is—when was the last time you saw a lot of payments industry leaders acting smart?

Global Wrap: In Australia, MC Exec Lashes Out At Apple/Amex Deal

This week’s global payments report has investments from Mexico, India and the U.K., an Australian cyber currency IPO delayed for the fifth time, a Canadian Amex small merchant initiative and a MasterCard exec lashing out at the Apple/Amex deal in Australia.

There’s more fallout from Apple’s decision to launch in Australia (and Canada, for that matter) only with American Express cards. This time, it’s from a MasterCard exec crying foul, arguing that regulators take a more lax regulatory position with Amex than with other card brands.
Eddie Grobler, division president of MasterCard Australasia, said “Apple Pay launching in Australia with Amex proprietary cards was a symptom of its ability to charge merchants much higher fees than Visa or MasterCard and therefore having much fatter margins to share with Apple, which has been demanding a cut of the fees paid to banks before allowing them onto Apple Pay.”

Use Apple Pay, Get Free Rides On The London Underground

The only viable long-term way to get shoppers to change their preferred payments method is to give them a reason to do so. Whether that’s a discount for using NFC rather than plastic or greenbacks, coupons/discounts that are only available using a specific payment method or some other perk, consumers need to get something concrete. This is the bulk of the message that MCX is screaming. Someone at Apple is paying attention.

With its U.K. rollout, MasterCard announced free Apple Pay travel days until the end of the year, but only on Mondays. Technically, the fares aren’t free but riders will have those fares reimbursed. “Customers can travel on Tube, buses, tram, DLR, London Overground and most National Rail services in London,” said a MasterCard statement. “From a standing start to today, over 220 million journeys have been made using contactless bank cards and devices with over one million contactless journeys made every day. Currently, contactless journeys made across all modes make up nearly 25 percent of pay as you go journeys.” More to the point, though, those contactless payments have generated non-travel contactless payments.

MasterCard Thinks It Can Standardize Mobile Loyalty. And It Might Be Right

For mobile payments to move into the massive adoption phase, some version of loyalty/couponing will be essential. Otherwise, once the novelty wears off, there are simply no sustainable reasons for shoppers to stick with mobile. But with every mobile player preparing to somehow push loyalty, the chance of having conflicting incompatible technology is all-but-certain. Can MasterCard change that?

On Tuesday (Nov. 17), the number two card brand introduced a loyalty middleware specification that it hopes will be adopted widely enough to give mobile loyalty a chance to grow seamlessly. Given that few if any mobile payment schemes will be offered without support for at least one issuer’s MasterCard, the card brand seems a sufficiently politically neutral player to sidestep the usual vendor resistance. In MasterCard’s statement, the brand said it’s proposed specification “enables mobile applications to offer a seamless connection between payment, promotions and loyalty redemption. It enables consumers to select their loyalty card, the coupons/promotions they want to redeem, and make a payment in a single or double tap at a contactless terminal.”

Transit Mobile Payment Is A PF Dream Come True

On Monday (Nov. 16), San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee officially brought his city’s public transit system into the mobile payment era, following similar moves by cities across the globe. Just last month, the totality of London’s black cabs said that they will accept mobile payment.

These efforts are crucial for the payment facilitator community as nowhere is the need for the speed and convenience of mobile payments more needed than in urban public transit. Of potentially greater significance are the huge volumes of consumers that are using such systems—and the extreme tendency of such communities to get comfort from what other travelers are doing. In short, successful transportation trials have a far greater chance of meaningfully moving the acceptance needle than almost any other vertical. As much as coffee shops may gravitate to every kind of mobile payment imaginable, they simply don’t have the volume—nor the copycat psychology—that comes with the transportation territory.