PayPal and parent company eBay both been the beneficiaries of consumers’ adoption of mobile commerce, experiencing 193 percent and 153 percent year-over-year increases in mobile-commerce volume, respectively. As mobile payments reach the point of sale, one group of merchants paying close attention is restaurants, with 54 percent planning to increase investments in technology during the upcoming year.
Currently, less than one-in-10 table-service restaurants offer electronic table-side payments, which, according to an NRF survey, is important to 18-to-34-year olds. One advantage to mobile payments is the inherent mobility of the payment-acceptance device, which enables restaurants to provide a “pay-at-the-table” service.
Furthermore, at Starbucks’ recent Biennial Investor Conference, Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman claimed the company’s mobile-payments application would account for 10 percent of all payment volume in Starbucks stores by the end of 2013.
These thoughts on mobile payments coincide with VeriFone’s quarterly earnings announcement. From Forbes:
VeriFone reported its quarterly results Thursday. Consensus expectations call for the company to deliver earnings of $0.76 per share on revenues of $495 million. Whether or not the actual results for the company’s latest quarter miss, meet or beat those expectations will have a short-term impact on the company’s share price. Instead, however, I’ll be looking and listening for more on the company’s thoughts on mobile payment adoption across its customer base, which includes 75% of the top 200 North American retailers.
Clearly, mobile payments and m-commerce will continue to be in the conversation for organizations related to payments in any way. Demand for expanding the mobile platform is growing, and mobile payments is a big part of that. For the next few years, most payments related discussions will have to address the implied question, “and what about mobile?”
Click here to read more from Forbes. Read T. Jack Williams’ recent Industry Perspective about mobile commerce.