There has been considerable conversation about how Amazon is changing the payments business and how they could impact banking further, should they choose to take on more financial activities. An article in CIO considers another retailer that perhaps isn’t getting as much attention, but is more quietly playing a larger and larger role in consumers’ financial transactions. Consider the following regarding 7-Eleven:
Seeking to strengthen consumer loyalty, 7-Eleven has launched a chatbot and a new rewards app, and is experimenting with other emerging technologies such as drones, biometrics and peer-to-peer payments. If the initiatives work as intended, they will help the chain redefine convenience for the 55 million consumers who visit any of the chain’s 63,000 stores worldwide daily, says 7-Eleven Chief Digital Officer and CIO Gurmeet Singh.
“We have the opportunity to redefine convenience through digital by building experiences for the future in the store and outside the store,” Singh, who joined 7-Eleven from Capital One last year, tells CIO.com. “We have the opportunity to delight customers.”
But not without some serious attention to making an already seamless user experience — the average customer transaction is two minutes — even more frictionless. Roughly 50 percent of the U.S. population lives within one mile of a 7-Eleven, which processes 20 billion transactions a year.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
Read the quoted story here