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Mobile meets retail at recent RAMP conference

Mobile Payments Today chatted with a host of mobile payment companies at the recent RAMP conference.

September 21, 2011 by James Wester

At last week's RAMP Advanced Commerce and Mobile Retail Services Summit in Chicago, Ill., representatives from retailers, technology companies and payment providers met to discuss retail commerce and the increasingly important role of mobile and social commerce to merchants.

Most attendees and presenters at the RAMP conference expressed the sense that retailers are still figuring out how best to integrate mobile payments and technologies into their businesses. But the general consensus was that retailers are starting to realize how important, and powerful, mobile devices can be in building relationships with their customers beyond payments.

Conference organizer and producer Melissa Morrissey of the Morrissey Group said companies are now seeing that mobile payments and technologies are more than just a necessary evil and actually bring value beyond making transactions happen.

"Now, with these new payment rails offering all these new services that ride over them, the mobile retail services now make the mobile payment so much more exciting," Morrissey said. She explained retailers can see how their mobile marketing efforts drive traffic to their stores and give them a better view of their customers.

Morrissey also said it's the very nature of mobile devices that gives them the ability to make a deeper connection with the companies that are using them to reach their customers.

"The phone is the only personal media device," Morrissey said. She explained that all other media channels, from TV to computers, are shared, but people's mobile phones are theirs and theirs alone. That connection with the device means companies that access that channel can have a more intimate relationship, Morrissey said.

"We're seeing the retailers seeing the connections between the payments and the services, and that's what people are excited about," Morrissey said.

Along with sessions covering technologies and strategies for integrating mobile commerce and social networks into the retail experience, the RAMP conference also had a tradeshow floor where Mobile Payments Today set up shop to chat with many of the attendees about their companies and the state of the industry. Industry experts such as Mohammad Khan, CEO of ViVotech, BOKU's Director of Marketing Eliana Sur, and Oscar Muñoz, VP of business development from CHARGEAnywhere, stopped by to offer their insights. The interview with Melissa Morrissey is below. To see all of the interviews conducted at the event, visit the Videos page on Mobile Payments Today.