An article in Forbes includes an interview with NCR’s President and COO Mark Benjamin and his viewpoint regarding where NCR sees the greatest opportunities in payments. Predictably, he sees further development with mobile payments. When asked about major trends at play he responded:
We see a lot of different payment approaches, but most of them are leveraging mobile devices. Contactless has been working well in Europe and Australia. This has had a slow start in the U.S. but it will come. WeChat and Alipay in China are huge and much further ahead.Frictionless payments, immediate payments and mobile wallets that enable wearable technologies, as well as virtual currencies such as bitcoin and blockchain are certainly major trends.
Benjamin also discussed the need for a different payment process for in-store transactions where self- service isn’t typical. Presumably NCR is looking to supply the hardware and software to make this happen:
There still are areas where self-checkout hasn’t gained traction so far, such as fast fashion and department store retailers who look at self-checkout to reduce lines.
To appeal to shoppers who are making multiple purchases at once, we are working with retailers to combine self-checkout with in-aisle self scanning, where a customer scans and packs items as they shop.
The consumer then finishes the transaction by going to a payment zone. They can pay there with their mobile wallet, or easily transfer the order to a self-checkout device and pay with card or cash without having to unload everything from the cart again.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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