In late November, eBay announced their newly improved shoppingapp including…
“The integration of RedLaser’s barcode scanning technologyis particularly useful, allowing users to quickly compare eBay’sprices to retail, and to pre-populate information about the itemsthey’re selling…”
Sounds like a handy tool to help consumers comparison shop whichgot me thinking – can comparison payments be too far behind?
Merchants are making important strides in their ability toinfluence consumer choice of payment at the POS and while we’re notseeing much happen yet, it is certainly just a matter of timebefore some of their strategies begin to emerge.One of them mayvery well be providing payment comparison information at checkout.Enacting this type of strategy in an online or mobileenvironment would be a logical place to start and could possiblyinclude such things as, free shipping tied to lower cost of payment(i.e., “use your debit card and receive free shipping.”) or even insome cases, variable cost of merchandise based on payment or cardtype.
Consumers see special offers from card networks, merchant fundeddiscounts, and variable gas pricing based on cash vs. credit allthe time.Adding an additional dimension to comparison shoppingdoesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch, especially consideringhow carefully consumers are spending to begin with.Determining howone pays for something is a mental exercise most people go throughas they consider all of the payment types they have in theirwallet.Influencing that choice – there’s an app for that!