Today’s competitive landscape demands new innovations to ensure long-term customer loyalty and satisfaction. While your current payment technology may be sufficient in completing customer transactions quickly and effectively, it may not offer the latest
convenience technology that has become popular in our high-tech society.

In recent years, mobile technology has become an increasingly popular trend in the payment world. Mobile solutions offer businesses the ability to minimize lines while quickening transactions. Line busting—completing a sales transaction with a mobile solution so customers don’t need to stand in line— has become commonplace in popular retail stores to improve a customer’s in-store purchasing experience.

It’s important for businesses to be aware of their customers’ payment preferences and patterns, so they can tailor their solutions to customer needs.

Here are four things merchants should know about mobile card readers:

How Mobile Card Readers Work

In plain language, mobile card readers turn smart devices into payment devices. This allows businesses to accept payments anytime, anywhere. Businesses are finding a plethora of benefits from incorporating mobile card readers into their operations; however, the most significant perks include increased sales, improved customer engagement, and better flexibility for customers. This allows retail businesses to provide a more seamless user experience for their customers.

Helps Grow Your Customer Base

By offering multiple payment options for your customers to choose from, you’re letting them know that you care about their preferences. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Accepting all payment methods signals to your customer base that you sincerely care about their business and are willing to invest in the technology to offer better convenience and flexibility. By accepting more payment types, you’re opening the door to a larger customer base which in return, allows you to increase revenue.

 Speeds Up Checkout Process

If you’re looking to create efficiencies within your business, incorporating a mobile card reader into your operations may be a good place to start. According to an article by Reflexis, incorporating mobile solutions allows merchants to keep pace with their mobile-enabled customers who are continuously purchasing new technologies of their own. Adopting mobile card readers allows customers to avoid long lines by purchasing their items at any location in the store. This will also boost employee productivity by giving them the flexibility and agility to meet customer needs with fewer delays.

Increases Safety of Payments

Many people have the misconception that mobile readers cannot protect cardholder data as safely as a full POS system can. However, mobile solutions that accept payments on mobile devices are completely secure as well. While many are not physically connected to countertop POS systems, they still use the same encryption methods that other POS systems do. Cards that are processed through mobile solutions can only be decrypted by banks acquiring payment and are safe in merchant environments. Therefore, thieves will have difficulty hacking credit card information. Mobile payments also decrease the amount of time retail employees spend fumbling with cash. Instead, they can use that time to focus on providing customers with excellent service.

The ID TECH Solution

In recent years, more and more merchants have been using mobile solutions to bridge the gap between online and in-person purchasing experiences. The current purchasing experience has evolved and now requires companies to create seamless, personalized experiences where buying merchandise is directly tailored to each customer. Adding mobile solutions allows team members to directly engage customers while providing quick payment transactions. ID TECH provides the point-of-sale hardware that’s equipped with NFC technology to accept all popular payments and mobile wallet apps. Please see our entire line of secure and powerful mobile card readers by visiting our website.

About ID TECH

ID TECH has established a solid reputation in the industry as a leading payment peripheral provider with magnetic stripe, EMV contact, and EMV contactless expertise. We are also an OEM payment solution provider with the capability and willingness to customize solutions to fit our customers’ needs. With a strong foundation and continued success rooted in card readers, ID TECH is currently expanding its reach in the ever-evolving payments industry.

To learn more about ID TECH, please visit our about page.

 

In our previous article, we discussed Payment Trends in the Vending Industry and the technological advancements that have resulted from the changes in consumer behavior. Now, we will look at how mobile payment solutions are being rapidly adopted and integrated in stores and services across the world.  Applications such as PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay are becoming increasingly popular as the years go by. In fact, the mobile payments market is expected to reach a value of $4.69 trillion by the year 2025.

As mobile payments skyrocket, companies are investing in mobile payment technology and paying close attention to consumer behavior to get a better grasp of their payment preferences. Here are some of the top payment trends in the mobile industry right now:

Increase in mPOS

Mobile-point-of-sale (mPOS) technology allows businesses to take their payment solutions wherever their customers may be. With mobile payment solutions, they can accept payments even when they’re not physically in their designated storefront.

Take popular fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A, for example. When their drive thru is busy, oftentimes they have their employees walk around to each car with a mobile device where they then take your order and complete your payment. This allows them to speed up the checkout process and get their customers on their way faster.

More In-Store Mobile Payments

Many businesses have had the option of accepting mobile payments for some time now, however customers still preferred to pay with cash or credit card. Now, contactless payment methods provided by mobile companies such as Apple, Samsung, and Google are being adopted at a higher rate than ever before. Because they offer mobile wallets that allow consumers to pay without touching any payment terminals, along with the extra benefit of additional security and authentication features, customers have been more inclined to pay for their purchases with their mobile device.

While mobile wallet payments only amounted to $75 billion in 2016, they are forecasted to grow to $500 billion by the end of 2020 – or about 80% over five years. Visa reports that already “29% of Americans now make zero weekly purchases with cash, with the percentage of people who use cash for everything dropping from 24% to 18% since 2015.”

Biometric Authentication

Payment industries have long been looking for advanced security methods to ensure sensitive data is safe from outside tampering. Face and finger scanning are two of the top mobile security measures available right now and are quickly replacing passwords and other authentication measures.

As mobile payments increase, we are likely to see an increase in biometric authentication as well. Biometric authentication is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It has become a reliable way for merchants to verify the identity of their customers and partners, and has also proven effective for preventing mobile wallets from being hacked.

E-Commerce to Drive Mobile Payments

We live in a world where convenience is everything to customers. The increase in mobile devices has sparked the growth of the e-commerce industry and customers are turning to their mobile devices to purchase groceries, shop their favorite stores, and everything in between. According to the E-Commerce Foundation, more than 25% of consumers purchase via mobile devices weekly rather than in-store.

Especially with the current COVID-19 climate, customers are more likely to shop online to comply with social distancing and stay-at-home orders. During these unprecedented times, many companies are providing free shipping and other incentives to customers who choose to do business via their mobile device.

ID TECH’s Mobile Solutions

ID TECH offers a variety of payment solutions for various industries including ATM, loyalty, parking, transit, and vending. Of those solutions is ID TECH’s VP3320S, a PCI PTS 5.X SRED mobile payment device that supports all contactless payment methods from tap-and-go cards to payments from mobile wallets. It is able to connect to iOS and Android host devices and is housed in an ultra-compact design, making it the ideal unit to be integrated into a mobile payment solution.

Learn more about our mobile solutions here.

About ID TECH

ID TECH is a leading global payment peripheral provider with expertise in magnetic stripe, EMV contact, EMV contactless, and OEM customization solutions. We have a strong foundation and continued success rooted in card readers and are always expanding our product offering to provide innovative solutions for the ever-evolving payments industries. Payment Security is an integral part of our product offering, and ID TECH as a company prides itself at being at the forefront of payment security in our design, development, manufacturing, and sales processes.

To learn more about ID TECH and our dedication to achieving payment security, please visit our about page.