Mobile Payments: Coming to a Store Near You

• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 9, 2014

Everyone seems to want to get in on the mobile payments action.

While credit card companies continue to expand their various joint ventures around the globe, some retailers are eying how they might participate in the activity.

British supermarket powerhouse Tesco and Auchan in France are looking at their mobile wallets to give them a leg up, based on a recent look at the landscape by Reuters.

The key for merchants is not just to make the shopping experience (at least the checkout part) a bit easier, but also to give them more of that back end and highly sought after customer data.

Retailers can use that data to create more relevant and meaningful offers to specific customers. They also can identify their more loyal customers and tailor even better offers for them.

They are hardly alone in the mobile payments arena, with banks, Google, Apple and PayPal, among many others, being highly active.

There are too many mobile wallet approaches to count and some are only in certain countries or markets.

Bu not all retailers are likely to become immersed in their own mobile wallet approaches, since there are plenty available from which to choose.

However, the opportunity to harness and leverage customer activity in real time and use that information to further additional sales can be quite a lure.

Consumers are about to face a mass of mobile payment opportunities, just based on the sheer number of organizations lining up to provide these options.

They’ll come face to face with them at mass market fast food chains like Subway and McDonald’s, sporting and concert events, public transportation and even buying coffee at Starbucks.

Maybe during that next shopping trip to the mall, mobile shoppers will see even more mobile payment offers from their favorite store.

The platforms are being built and launched. We’ll soon see how many shoppers will come.