Contactless payments may be normal for students but what’s next for the POS?
Students entering higher education this year are more likely than ever to carry out safe shopping online from a mobile device or use their smartphone to pay for items in real world stores, according to a new study from Vista Retail Support.
More youngsters are heading to universities across the UK this month than ever before, bringing with them an estimated £30 billion in spending power. Within the next three years this will have risen to £37 billion annually, meaning that retailers will really want to maximise their impact among this audience. 71 per cent of modern students have access to a payment card with contactless connectivity onboard. Roughly the same proportion use their smartphones for safe shopping online or for in-store payments, meaning that there is a parity between the popularity of these two emerging platforms.
At the other end of the scale, wearable devices, like smartwatches, are not gaining traction as expected, with just under a tenth of students stating that they own this type of gadget. This limits the likelihood that retail-based activities will be carried out via wearables among anything other than a small minority of students for the foreseeable future.
Report spokesperson, James Pepper, said that the slow uptake of wearables may suggest that they are either prohibitively expensive, or not widely supported by retailers. But for the time being a combination of traditional payment card transactions and modern mobile solutions are preferable to 96 per cent of students.
Pepper said that retailers had an opportunity to present themselves as well equipped to cope with the current crop of tech-savvy, digital native students. This generation has grown up at a time when smartphones were the norm and now they are better able to use them in a retail context than any of their older counterparts.
Which leads me on to why the Contactless Intelligence 2017 Conference will be focusing on new forms of payment interactions - specifically looking at ’When Point of Interest becomes the Point of Sale’, because if it is not from the wearable - then from where? We’ll be focusing on the transformation of the way we pay – both from a consumer perspective and the merchant perspective. In terms of applications, this will include innovative digital payments solutions based on IoT platforms, allowing new use cases through digital contracts, enabled by smart, secure devices.
If we look to how the industry is transforming the way we pay, we must also take a long, hard look at the mPOS and Unattended sector. In both cases, payment becomes more and more about convenience and choice. mPOS’ core goal used to be fast card issuing, now it is being used for queue busting and personal shopping. With an attended mPOS, retailers and the hospitality sector can decrease queues and waiting times and increase the quality of the user experience.
In the Unattended sector, the conference will look towards the convergence of digital signage and contactless or mobile payment. Using interactive, contactless-enabled kiosks brings together the convenience of contactless payment and the sheer endless possibilities of digital signage, access to stock, delivery options etc. Krowne has some experience in this area. Back in 2013, Krowne developed the Endless Shelf Platform that was designed to focus on the changing face of interactive displays (Point of Interest) towards purchasing and payment (Point of Sale) as the group worked with leading industry players in this sector.
We have already spoken to a number of interested parties in this area and we are looking forward to starting our second decade in this area with innovations, technologies, key speakers and up-and-coming players in the forever evolving payment technology market. Perhaps not on the edge of space though!
Further details and agenda points will be made available in the next few weeks so check the Contactless Intelligence site on a regular basis.
Until next week.
Steve Atkins
Contactless Intelligence
