The transferability of experience is indeed what financial institutions and merchants are contending with when structuring the payment aspect of transactional engagement with consumers. The article is on the money with its clear recognition that consumers expect the low-to-no friction experience when settling up for goods and services these days in those cases where expectations are clear and have been met (e.g. efficient transportation to a specified destination, or a pack of Paper-towel rolls being delivered). Providing the consumer with an environment where they may express their intent, and then have it fulfilled for a fair price is what the author outlines. And there appears to be a clear path to the implementation of these means.
The metric we must keep an eye on is not convenience, ease of doing business, or NPS scores, but the expectations our customers have when it comes to our products. If we’re not meeting those expectations now and in the future, how well or poorly we execute becomes a moot point. We’ve already lost. A good parallel is OAuth. We grant apps permission to log us in using Facebook, Google, or other credentials all the time. The convenience of just passing the user from your app to the OAuth flow, and back into the app is smooth and requires little of the user. In general, the mental lift is low as most users stay logged into those platforms and don’t need to enter any credentials at all. OAuth has become such a standard that now if an app asks for additional login credentials or is unable to use OAuth, users feel it is an exception to the norm. They will then often abandon whatever enrollment process they are attempting. It’s a natural response to any additional burden that consumers know can be better.
Mercator Advisory Group expects the integration of implied commerce to find application in expanding spheres in the near term, with preferences in how to “settle-up” being intuited based on prior engagements. However, we do imagine there also exists opportunities for payment method selection to also be part of the consumer experience, namely when negotiation of the transaction is part and parcel of the transaction itself. For the most part, the day-to-day transactions will be of the former, like in the Amazon Go model whereby I am charged for the pack of gum I take from the store.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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