TAMPA, Fla.—Are mobile wallets about to be leapfrogged by a new and possibly better way to pay?
Tom Davis, SVP, finance and technology with CSCU, believes that the next wave of POS payment innovations could mean some dramatic changes are in store.
On CSCU’s The Payments Review blog, Davis explained that several checkout-less shopping technologies are starting to show up in the marketplace leveraging cloud-based payments.
“With checkout-less shopping, consumers can walk into a retail establishment and take whatever products they want off the shelves and walk right out of the store. No lines, no hassle, and the payment happens automatically and is mostly invisible,” wrote Davis. “Sounds too real to be true? It isn’t. In fact, there are several examples in market across many different retailers utilizing several different technologies.”
Order Ahead
Order-ahead at Chipotle, Taco Bell and other quick service restaurants allow customers to have their order prepared for them before they enter the restaurant, explained Davis.
“The customer can then quickly go into the restaurant and pick up their meal while the payment happens in the cloud,” said Davis. “Sam’s Club’s ‘Scan and Go’ app allows a customer to shop in store, pay via the cloud, and bypass the checkout. Google Hands Free, which is in trials with over a dozen merchants, allows a consumer to walk into a restaurant, order their food, and simply say ‘I would like to pay with Google.’”
Amazon recently unveiled a checkout-less brick and mortar grocery store that could be a vision of the “grocery store of the future,” said Davis. Amazon’s 1,800 square foot grocery store is completely designed around a checkout-less shopping experience, he said.
Tom Davis
Using Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi technologies, merchants can connect with the customer’s smart devices to initiate and authenticate payments in the cloud, explained Davis.
“These cloud-based payments are really just an extension of card on file. However, when paired with smart devices in brick and mortar stores several benefits can be had,” Davis said. “Layer on Visa Checkout and Masterpass which provide tokenization to these payment experiences and they may be safer than inserting a chip card into a physical terminal at checkout.”
Cloud And IoT
Davis noted that it isn’t just at the POS where the change is happening. Cloud-based payments are prevalent when purchasing with the Internet of Things (IoT), he said.
“IoT devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, which have been flying off the shelves this holiday season, leverage cloud-based payments,” said Davis. “Amazon Dash, the button you can place anywhere throughout your house to reorder a specific product works on the same principles. As payment within IoT proliferates as expected, cloud-based payments should increase dramatically.”