Mobile payments in retail – a useful Q&A

Last updated: 30 September 2015

We have blogged a lot about mobile payments here at Gemalto. Aside from our involvement in the ISIS mobile commerce platform, it’s a topic that we think will continue to be of interest to many of our readers – whether telecom operators, consumers, banks, credit card merchants or transport and retail providers. The mobile device certainly opens up a big new world and it seems our readers agree with us.

One of these is Michael Koploy of Software Advice who has blogged about mobile payments in retail. If you’ve ever wondered what mobile payments are, what retailers need to do to offer mobile payments, or what the consumer benefits are and whether POS systems will have to adapt, then this is one for you.

“In July 2011, Gartner released a study on worldwide mobile payment trends. In it, Gartner reported a striking 38 percent jump in mobile payment users from 2010 to 2011, to 141 million. Even so, the report notes that the market has been slow to develop, and mass market adoption may be more than four years away.

“The biggest hurdle is the need to change user behavior by convincing consumers to pay with mobile phones instead of cash and cards,” says Gartner Research Director Sandy Shen in the press release on the report.

Calvin Grimes, mobile product manager at Fiserv, sees mobile payments addressing a problem consumers don’t realize they even have. Grimes notes it’s similar to how consumers used to think about mobile banking. “They didn’t realize they wanted it until they had it,” says Grimes. “Leading financial institutions pioneered the service–now it’s expected.”

In the Q&A, Michael covers the basics, who the players in the ecosystem are and what the opportunity for merchants is. It’s well worth a read.

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