Consumers are increasingly looking to mobile wallets for a convenient purchasing experience – a trend which has big implications for retailers.
The consumer trend towards stockpiling wallets onto smart devices has driven an expectation of a seamless purchasing experience, a desire which is shaking up the retail sector.
But the advent of mobile wallets has a host of opportunities for retailers – offering convenience which drives impulse buying, personalised marketing opportunities and new potential for loyalty cards, whilst also helping to safeguard against rising rates of credit card fraud.
More than just a wallet
Mark Hodgson, head of Samsung Pay told Retailbiz that the rising popularity of mobile wallets is an area of immense potential if retailers want to stay competitive in the current and future retail market.
“Mobile wallets are having a growing impact and I would encourage retailers to think about how mobile wallets can help them.”
E-wallets also have the benefit of enabling retailers to seamlessly combine loyalty cards with tailored marketing and the checkout process, Mr Hodgson said.
“Integrating with a comprehensive mobile wallet, like Samsung Pay, retailers can ensure their loyalty cards sit on consumers’ mobile wallets alongside their bank cards. This means consumers never have to worry about bringing a purse, and can continue to buy from their favorite retailer and accrue points,” he said.
“There’s definitely a huge convenience factor for people who want to capture the points of checkout.”
As consumers look to mobile wallets for convenience, retailers also have a huge opportunity to target consumers by utilsiing e-wallet marketing by, for instance, enabling location-based service messages and notifying consumers of offers available, he said.
“One of the challenges is to make sure that in this world where payment channels are proliferating retailers are enabling themselves to interact with 3rd party providers.”
Tackling credit card fraud as consumer confidence plummets
As Australian merchants lose $476 million to fraud in just 12 months and Australian online fraudulent transactions rose a shocking 14 per cent, mobile wallets also help to restore consumer confidence by mitigating fraudulent transactions.
Mobile wallets are a very secure payment option, Mr Hodgson said, with the payment process involving biometric authentication with an iris scan, fingerprint or pin.
“Mobile wallets are extremely secure,” he said.
“One of the advantages of a mobile wallet is that you can combine the payment process with authentication. When you pay you authenticate each times, so I would imagine it would be a lot harder for people to load a fraudulent card into the wallet. You would expect the rates of fraud would be lower in that case than with a plastic card.”