Craig Guillot of Samsung’s Insights recently noted that millennial shopping habits have prompted retailers to adapt with the creation of more personalized, seamless experiences fueled by technology. Indeed, over 85 percent of U.S. millennials own a smartphone and are increasingly using their devices to browse and research products, order online, pick up in-store and pay at the point-of-sale with mobile wallets.
Payments Archive
Amazon eyes a new shopping paradigm with Go
Amazon is currently beta testing a new type of brick-and-mortar store that replaces the traditional checkout lines and registers with a Just Walk Out Shopping experience. Shoppers simply load up the Amazon Go app upon entering the store, take the products they want and go.
“Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning,” Amazon explained in a company blog post.
Biometric security and the future of mobile payments
According to Patrick Moorhead, Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, security has become one of the “biggest issues” in today’s technologically-connected society.
“We use mobile devices to transfer money, pay bills and even to share our health information. Nevertheless, most users don’t want to spend a great deal of time thinking about the security of their device. They expect security to be seamlessly integrated into any technology they use,” he explains.
Augmented Reality (AR) goes shopping
Qualcomm defines Augmented Reality (AR) as the superimposition of digital content on top of a view of the real world. Popularized by games such as Pokémon GO, the technology facilitates significant opportunities for brick-and-mortar stores. AR has already been adopted by a slew of retailers across diverse markets including travel, real estate, food, furniture, toys and fashion.
Mobile wallet use up in 2016
A recent survey commissioned by Capital One has found that nearly one quarter (24%) of respondents are using mobile wallets in some capacity, with 16% leveraging the technology to make purchases.
Of the 24%, more than 63% confirmed the use of a mobile wallet for less than year. As Mobile Payments Today notes, the above-mentioned figure illustrates the rapid acceptance and deployment of the technology during 2016. Indeed, 49% of mobile wallet owners said they use the technology at retail stores while 41% have paid with mobile wallets at grocery stores. In addition, 37% have purchased fast food with a mobile wallet, with 26% using the technology at drugstores and 27% employing mobile wallets for travel-related purchases.
U.S. mobile payments ready to ramp
New research published by eMarketer confirms that 38.4 million Americans 14 and over will have used their mobile phones to pay at a point of sale at least once in the preceding six months during 2016. According to eMarketer analyst Bryan Yeager, the above-mentioned statistics represent 19.4% of U.S. smartphone users, although the figure is projected to hit 33.1% by 2020.