Unattended: the password for mobile payments
It’s this time of year that Contactless intelligence starts to look at the industry as a whole and makes some forward looking hypothesis on what will be the real driver for contactless and mobile developments over the next twelve months. Primarily so that we have a general idea of the shape and format for next year’s Contactless intelligence Conference in London.
Discussions have taken place between the team but the general consensus is that, despite observers pointing out that mobile payment is a solution looking for an answer, the ‘real observation’ should be in consumer purchasing behaviour. Namely, that to use a mobile wallet instead of a card at an attended purchase point doesn’t really make sense. However, use a mobile wallet at an unattended POS (parking, vending, transport, ticketing) and suddenly it makes a lot more sense.
After all, vending and parking are usually cash driven and with low value purchases and most importantly, there is normally no wait between purchase and fulfilment (unlike, say, paying at a coffee bar and then waiting for the barista to make the coffee). When it comes to transportation and ticketing, I would say that in well over 75% of purchases today the fulfilment can be loaded straight into the mobile wallet itself (e.g. similar to Apple’s Passbook). Even with the fulfilment loaded (let’s take tickets as an example), the utilisation can once again normally be carried out in a standalone environment.
Just last week (and just in time for World Cup visitors), the new terminal at Viracopos-Campinas International Airport, near São Paulo, Brazil was equipped with 53 self-check-in kiosks from IER, a French subsidiary of Bolloré Group, and included a massive 212 desk check-in printers and 82 barcode readers with NFC reading capabilities for boarding. The self check-in kiosks are selling premium seating, can read electronic passports and print baggage-tags. "We wanted to get state-of-the-art equipment, with two screens on the self-check-in kiosks and RFID/NFC capabilities," Marcelo Mota, Viracopos Airport’s COO, said in a statement. Self check-in and purchases of a seat upgrade - all via your mobile.
Other kinds of tickets - such as concert tickets purchased and stored on the mobile - is not new, but last week Ticketmaster updated their Apple Ticketmanster app to include not just the ability to purchase a ticket online but also to sell and transfer tickets. The app includes features that are entertainment industry firsts, including: Sell/Transfer to send or sell tickets directly to friends and other fans; an anti-fraud animated watermark so venues know what mobile tickets are authentic; Swipe to Buy, swipe left to quickly buy tickets; and access to both primary and resale tickets providing the most comprehensive selection of available tickets for live events. “This app offers fans the best selection of event tickets available as it provides, for the first time on mobile, all of their available, verified ticket options,” said Mike Lane, vice president of mobile products for Ticketmaster. “Not only does our app provide the biggest selection of event tickets, it also offers fans the richest feature set in the industry, all re-engineered to help fans easily find, buy, transfer and sell their tickets. And on the day of the event, the app allows fans’ iPhones to become the ticket.” Again, nothing new in the basic premise but by pulling the consumer deeper into the experience (without external personnel), users are gaining more intuitive experience of purchase/transfer/secure end-product usage experience from their phone and recognising the benefits of doing so.
This fundamental approach is one being adopted by a number of wallet-interested parties. Only last week, the OSPT Alliance released Version 2 revision 2 of its free to download CIPURSE™ open standard, which offers an advanced foundation for developing interoperable fare collection systems. A number of administration updates have been made to the standard to remove ambiguity in its language, reduce complexity, and improve interoperability. The introduction of the first cross-market multiple proximity system environment, however, is the most significant advancement. The mechanisms which have been defined within the revised standard can be used across multiple domains to offer transparency as markets converge their services onto a single device, such as a smartphone. “When multiple applications reside on a single platform, it takes time for a reader in the terminal to identify and connect with the required application to authorize access,” said Laurent Cremer, Executive Director of OSPT Alliance. “By establishing a universal proximity environment that uses defined application identifiers, this process can be streamlined. This ultimately decreases the identification time at the turnstile and shortens queues to access a public transit network or an event.”
Mark my words, the less of an interaction with attended POS personnel - the greater the chance of mobile wallet adoption. Only a slight segue into contactless cards was this tweet I read on Twitter last month (yes, I save tweets I like) from James Martin @Pundamentalism;
“Contactless payment on your card?”
“Yes”
“Press it against the screen”
“Not really contactless, is it?”
“...”
“...”
“Just press it”
And finally, Isis, the mobile wallet app from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have always been cagey about releasing actual user figures but last week toy merchant Toys R’ Us revealed it has seen 23,000 individual transactions conducted using Isis in the three months since it began accepting NFC-based payments. The company is “very happy” with the service, Gregory Todd, the merchant’s senior analyst for credit card programs, told attendees at the 2014 NFC Solutions Summit. Michael Abbott, CEO, Isis on the Isis blog has announced that Isis is experiencing growth with over 20,000 new Isis wallets activated per day. All well and good but one can’t help but feel that there are some concerned marketers in the Isis camp who are looking with dismay at current news reports with the term Isis in the headlines. Not news on the wallet app but rather the terrorist network ‘The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (Isis), now threatening Baghdad. I know that the two have nothing in common (apart from being well funded - apparently) but none-the-less it’s a bit of a marketing communications headache. Anyone tells you different - trust me, they’re trying to wallpaper over the cracks.
Until next week.
Steve Atkins
Contactless Intelligence
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