Article

Opinion: Retailers need to wake up to 'tender steering'

Retailer associations have been virtually silent on the topic, and there are no reports of major retailers pushing this service.

May 4, 2011

A process called "tender steering" is new to most retailers. It means that a retailer can provide incentives to customers to use a particular type of card to pay. This method could give retailers the power to drive interchange rates down by driving customers to some types of cards and away from others.

You might think that after half a century of having little or no control over the fees they pay to accept card payments, retailers would be demanding that all mobile commerce products and NFC-enabled systems support tender steering. They are not. Retailer associations have been virtually silent on the topic, and there are no reports of major retailers pushing this service.

An old problem

Since the invention of the credit card, retailers have had little choice in the fees they pay to accept cards as a payment type. Retailers could negotiate with their providers (a.k.a acquirers or independent sales organizations) for volume discounts, switch to lower cost providers, or choose to accept some card brands like MasterCard or Visa and exclude other brands. While these tactics and strategies have lowered fees for some retailers, the scenario has been generally unchanged for decades.

Tender steering will allow retailers to drive market conditions for payment products. If new mobile commerce products and services offer competitive schemes and payment methods (like PayPal and ACH) to consumers at retail stores, the fees supported by both retail banks and MasterCard/Visa may be forced lower by retailers leveraging tender steering capabilities.

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

If tender steering mechanisms are designed out of the mobile commerce systems currently under development, then retailers may not have the option to use this powerful system, and retailers may emerge as subjects to the payments industry instead of the drivers of a transformed payments industry.

Recent announcements by the major payment corporations (MasterCard, Visa and others) will impact mobile commerce in United States. Unfortunately, retailers do not appear to be a voice in the development of these strategies and revenue models. As a result, tender steering mechanisms appear to be missing from most or all of the models currently under development by the MNO's, banks and schemes.

In fact, all recent announcements seem to point to the development of the mobile commerce arena in the United States as a set of programs dictated to retailers, not designed by retailers. If you can prove me wrong, I want to hear from you.

The key to reducing costs for retailers using mobile payments is looking beyond interchange alone. Tender steering is probably the best opportunity for retailers to effect market rates for payments, which is the polar opposite of the present situation.

David W. Schropfer is the co-founder of the Luciano Group, an international consulting firm, where he is responsible for strategic development and negotiation for the firm and its clients in the areas of mobile payments, partnership agreements and interconnections. (Photo by Andres Rueda)