Small Business Mobile Focus Shifting to Card Readers
Although small business payments are creating new openings for banks, merchant acquirers, and other service providers, the effects of mobile technology appear to be creating opportunities that differ from what many anticipated. Many firms have concentrated on consumer payments and mobile wallets, while small businesses are being transformed via their point of sale terminals and back-office systems. Among the factors driving these changes are new technology enabling a bevy of new services for small businesses such as tablet-based POS, new card-linked loyalty programs, and cloud-based technologies. This is turn fuels changes in the competitive environment with new entrants disrupting the traditional acquiring base. Small businesses are responding to these shifts by disclosing views on their priorities and requirements, with anxiety about pricing increasing, and a heightened focus on rates and fees for choosing POS and online acquirers. Small businesses’ interest in consumer-facing mobile wallets appears to be waning, and few retailers rate digital wallet acceptance as a crucial business priority. Meanwhile, there is high potential for mobile POS disruption through adoption of tablet- or smartphone-based payments among mainstream merchants. Accompanying this trend is small business owners increasingly using tablets to manage their establishments, and retailers demanding a range of back-office services to be tied to their payments technology.
From “Small Business Mobile Focus Shifts From Wallets to Card Readers”
PaymentsSource (12/12/13) Ewing, Dan