BOSTON — Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company, surveyed 180 companies to outline the implications and trends related to proximity mobile payments. Retail, hospitality, and transit companies are indicating high levels of awareness for mobile payments and NFC acceptance. Eighty percent of companies surveyed are aware of this technology today, compared to 63 percent in 2007. More significant is the fact that 52 percent of companies are exploring the use of mobile payment solutions for improving payment seamlessness, customer differentiation, and loyalty within the next 24 months.
Customer convenience was the key business pressure driving 64 percent of Best-in-Class retailers towards advanced POS payments such as contactless payments in 2007. This year, the top business pressure facing 40 percent of Best-in-Class retailers is the need for improved customer retention and loyalty, in addition to customer convenience as the next predominant pressure for 35 percent of Best-in-Class retailers.
While all three maturity classes are assessing cost benefit factors in substantial numbers, Best-in-Class are twice as likely as Laggard companies to currently take the next leap in assessing the change management functions including transaction risk assessment, cross-channel process impact, data management, hardware, and POS software changes required for a smooth migration path towards the use and acceptance of mobile payments at POS.
Aberdeen's data shows that the mobile payments technology landscape is in the early stages of the development lifecycle. In the last 2 years, advances have been made in the areas of mobile wallet and NFC applications for remote and proximity payments, hardware components that are integrated at the point-of-sale, and the mobile payment services elements related payment gateway and data services. However, this landscape will continue to reform and develop further in terms of user interface (UI), and integrated standards for configurability and extensibility, both for payments and marketing functions.
