The ideal engagement of a widening segment of consumers is for the merchant to “get them”, to have a experience in a shop that aligns with the experience they are gravitated to when shopping online. This level of understanding extends all the way through to payments and post transaction check-in and review.
Incorporating payment solutions into an omnichannel strategy has been particularly difficult for brick-and-mortar retailers, who often don’t know who their customers are in-store.
“If you really look at the situation, most [physical] retailers have separate systems for ecommerce and POS,” says Steidl. “By combining that for the first time, they have a common pool of data to illuminate who customers are, regardless of where a purchase takes place.”
Mercator Advisory Group recognizes that a good deal of the payment industry consolidation activity in recent months have effectively created the combination of POS and e-commerce expertise. This trend is illustrated in the formalized acquisition offer of Vantiv for Worldpay. The combined expertise will be an asset to clients of each of the individual firms in delivering the customer experience through and following checkout.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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