Tag: POS | Page 2 | Infinicept

Global Mobile Brew Is Strong

Turkish coffee is almost as strong as Turkish use of mobile devices for banking and shopping and payments, but not as strong as the payments industry action in Europe. The Turks led a group of 15 countries in most of the categories of questions asked about mobile device usage for a recently released report on mobile banking, mobile shopping and mobile payments conducted for ING International by Ipsos.

The report is titled ING International Survey Mobile Banking 2016 but as ING economist Ian Bright explains, one thing has led to another, as it usually does in fintech, and banking only scratches the surface now, four years after its first mobile banking report.

Alipay To Begin Conquest Of Munich And Beyond

In two weeks, Chinese tourists landing at Munich Airport will be able to use coupons sent to them through their mobile devices by retailers in the terminals. They will get a notification, directions to the retailer with the coupon, then once they bring the item to the POS, have a bar code scanned without worrying over currency conversion.

Alipay, a mobile payment app run by Alibaba partner Ant Financial, will be accepted in all POS terminals run by German processor Wirecard, which struck a deal with the company that operates 69 shops inside the airport. Markus Eichinger, head of mobile services at Wirecard, which is acting as both acquiring bank and processor for Alipay, gave an interview to paymentfacilitator.com just after coming from the partnership’s final testing session.

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.

Why Did Most Merchants Miss The EMV Deadline? Many Reasons, But Complexity Is The Top

With the liability shift and October already here, where are all the EMV-compliant merchants? Many are still waiting for software updates. And why is that, given how many years everyone has known about the October 2015 cutover? Seems that the U.S. payments processing space is a lot more complicated than even the payment itself realized, according to Randy Vanderhoof, who, as executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, is the industry’s chief EMV cheerleader.

Vanderhoof concedes that most U.S. merchants—60-65 percent, he said—are not EMV compliant today and he blames that on several factors, but payments complexity—and good old-fashioned procrastination—are at the top of his list. “The U.S. market is the most complex payments processing market in the world because we have multiple parties involved in managing the retail POS systems and multiple parties engaged in the processing and acquiring of payment transactions,” Vanderhoof said. “In other countries, other markets, the major banks who were then issuers were also the acquirers so they owned the terminals in those merchant locations. They invested in the cards and the terminals and their own banking acquiring network. In the U.S., financial institutions are separated from the merchants and acquirers. This means that there needs to be independent investments and alignments.”