Retailers facing new retail payments reality, Verifone

This is an exciting time for retailers and payment providers alike. But only retailers that are capable of taking advantage of consumer trends, technological advances – and guess correctly the way the wind is going to blow – will ultimately reap the benefits they will bring.

That’s the view of Raja Ray, Director, Products and Solutions, Verifone. In a comment piece for RTIH, he says: “While consumers may drive change, it is tech companies that enable it. A whole raft of new apps have delivered innovative ways of making and taking payments. No longer are we tied to the retailer’s till or have to join a queue to pay for goods and services. In fact, we don’t need banks or payment providers at all; friends are turning to peer-to-peer networking to split restaurants and taxi bills. Convenience store Amazon Go, which launched this year, is checkout free. Taxi provider Uber takes mobile phone payments upfront prior to receiving the service.”

But retailers won’t change the way they take payments on a whim, Ray argues. They need to keep overheads low so it also needs to make economic sense for them. “In many ways, this is why card payments have proved to be so popular; many of the changes take place between the retailer and the merchant with no direct impact to the customer. With the introduction of Apple Pay, for instance, the switch-over was automatic with zero up-front cost to the shop owner.”

Read the comment piece here.