IBS Journal February 2018
43
The rise of ‘merchant pay’
Initial forays by retailers into the mobile wallet space received mixed results. High-profile projects such as CurrentC failed to gain traction, and there was a sense that the technology giants and banks were set to dominate the space.
Fast forward to 2017. Mobile order and pay accounts for 10% of Starbucks’ in-store sales in the US, and Walmart Pay could shortly become the country’s most used mobile payment platform. Emboldened by this success, we have seen the launch of various retail wallet solutions across the globe, such as Tesco Pay+ in the UK and Decat Pay in France. This is a trend that will undoubtedly continue into 2018 and beyond.
Resurgent demand for digital retail wallets is testament to the huge benefits they can deliver to retailers and their consumers. Some 51% of consumers want to use a retailer’s app for faster purchases while in a brick-and-mortar store. Wallets incorporating in-aisle, scan-and-go technology enable shoppers to simply scan items
with their smartphones, checkout in-app and walk out. If checkouts are still in place, however, wallets can support various payment technologies including NFC, QR Codes and Bluetooth.
Digital retail wallets also offer the ability for retailers to get closer to customers than ever before. The future of marketing is in leveraging advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to deliver unique, one-to-one interactions with consumers. Device makers, social platforms and retailers are all converging in a bid to control these interactions. With a wallet offering, however, it is the retailers who are in prime position to collate and leverage consumer data and trends to provide personalised experiences.
Retailers can also utilise digital wallets as a platform to deliver meaningful value-added services (VAS) that consumers can easily use. Consumers are motivated by VAS, but the complexities involved in activating coupons or redeeming points means that some $160 billion of reward currency lies dormant. By simplifying its VAS offering within a retail wallet, retailers can boost consumer loyalty, drive sales and get ahead of the competition.
WITHOUT THE RIGHT ECOSYSTEM BUSINESSES FALL AT THE FIRST HURDLE
Senior vice president & head of business and application services, Fujitsu in EMEA Ravi Krishnamoorthi
We all understand how powerful technology is, from Google to digital disrupters Airbnb and Deliveroo. Our recent research found that 86% of businesses are planning for the impact of technology beyond the next 12 months. Businesses will undoubtedly find their ecosystem widen as new, technology- driven concepts are applied to every single market in the world.
Businesses must now take a bold approach to the challenges faced by working with entrepreneurs, not against them. Building relationships with digitally inherent businesses will help uncover bold, unique ideas and form entirely new services. This method will not only create a culture of inclusiveness, but breed an entirely new mentality that lends itself to success.
• Businesses will begin to invest in enterprise wearables now more than ever Digital wearables, such as smartwatches, healthcare devices and fitness trackers, were initially introduced as consumer nice-to- haves. Customers flocked to the technologies to keep track of daily activity and communicate. Yet the move from consumer gadgets to business tools continues to grow; ABI’s research found that enterprise wearables in businesses were in higher demand over the consumer market.
Now businesses are taking the hardware, integrating it with powerful monitoring and management software and ultimately creating entirely new business processes. They are also buying in
different ways – they want an end-to-end managed service, not just the raw tech. It’s no longer about giving someone a vital band or head mount, but building a service that alerts the business of any issues, re-routes messages back to a central hub and enables a reaction. That reaction can be anything from preventing harm to a worker that has fallen asleep in a dangerous location to tracking the wellbeing of your staff to ensure they aren’t overworked. Enterprise wearables will come of age in 2018 and businesses’ workforce will be the ones to profit most.
• Blockchain – businesses need to look beyond the hype in financial industries To understand blockchain we must first strip it down to a very basic understanding. It’s simply a standardised way of understanding the change of ownership. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of hype around it as everyone discusses digital currencies. It’s true that blockchain’s biggest success to date has been in virtual currencies, but it’s highly probable that it will be even more successful outside of financial services.
Complex tasks such as contracting in legal practices and tracking retailers’ supply chains from farm to supermarket could be simplified by a blockchain-style ledger. The security benefits would be vast and a universal application could see the tech turn its trend status into a tangible business benefit.
As Bill Gates famously said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” Blockchain is most likely to be a slow burn but its potential impact over 2018 and beyond could be huge.
www.ibsintelligence.com
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