Tag: Mobile payment

McDonald’s To Replace Cashiers With Self-Service Kiosks

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
McDonald’s is reportedly planning to roll out self-service kiosks in stores across the country that will enable customers to place and pay for their order by themselves. Meant to streamline and accelerate the ordering process and cut down labor cost for the fast food franchise, this touch screen technology could also offer customers more customization options, as well as further integrating other digital assets such as loyalty program and mobile payment into this point of sale system.

What Brands Should Do
For retailers and other brands looking to experiment with this kind of self-service system, the first step would be figuring out how to create a user-friendly interface. Moreover, finding the right digital service vendors to partner with would be crucial to fully tap into the potential of such digital integration at point of sale to improve the overall in-store experience.

 

Source: Business Insider

Fast Forward: The Biggest Announcements From Apple’s WWDC 2015 Event

Posted on by Lab Team

Your guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape by IPG Media Lab. A fast read for you and a forward for your clients and team.

What Apple Announced

“Proactive” Search Extensibility
Apple kicked off the presentation with previews of the next-gen operating systems—OS X El Capitan for laptops and iMacs, and iOS 9 for mobile devices. One feature that stood out was “Proactive Assistant,” a new AI-enabled search for iOS 9, complete with deep-linking capability for apps and even indexed websites. Working with an enhanced Siri, the new search feature is context-sensitive, suggesting apps and content based on time, location, and even user habits.

Enhanced Personalization On Apple Watch
Apple unveiled the new OS for the recently launched Apple Watch, promising to bring more personalization to the device, such as “complications” which display customizable information from third-party apps right on the watch face. The new watchOS also added support for HomeKit, allowing the watch to interact and remotely control the various new sensors and connected devices.

Apple Pay Upgraded To Wallet
Apple Pay got a major upgrade, adding support for loyalty and store cards and more. The prior lack of integration with retailer loyalty programs and CRM systems had been cited as the biggest obstacle to retailer adoption of Apple Pay. These additions will help give more credibility to Tim Cook’s January claim that “2015 will be the year of Apple Pay.”

In an effort to support small businesses, Apple Pay will be compatible with a new reader from Square, launching in the fall. Moreover, Pinterest is integrating Apple Pay with their new buyable pins. Due to all these development, Passbook has been rebranded as Wallet. And, of course, all of these new features will be supported on the Apple Watch.

New Apps for Music and News
By introducing the new Music and News apps, Apple is officially getting into content curation to further enhance its mobile experience. Besides a paid-only streaming subscription service that rivals Spotify, the new Apple Music also puts curated music discovery front and center with a “for you” recommendation channel and a new 24/7 global radio. Similarly, the News app promises content recommendation based on reader interest and editorial curation.

Market Impact

“Proactive” Attack On Google
The new proactive features in iOS 9 are Apple’s take on the same user problems as Google’s new “Now On Tap” feature, as both aim to make use of the massive data that mobile users generate and leverage the behavioral insights into a more anticipatory user experience. As users move away from the mobile web into apps, Apple is deep-linking app content from search results to solidify its app ecosystem and help users find what they are looking for more quickly.

Apple is offering APIs for controlling how content appears in iOS Search. This applies to both websites and apps and amounts to a major new search platform for brands to optimize for. Today, brands have more control of their destiny on iOS than on Android, where Google is holding all the cards.

Making Apple Watch More Brand-Friendly
Allowing third-party complications on the watch face provides brands with a great opportunity to get on the prime real estate on the wrist. For example, Volkswagen’s Remote Control app was featured in the demo, and included a complication which puts the carmaker’s logo prominently on the watch face with the car’s battery charge level. HomeKit integration and native apps, with access to all of the Watch’s sensors, will significantly expand the Watch’s functionality and reach making the platform more valuable for brands to get on board.

Moving Beyond Just Payment
Apple Pay has been making remarkable progress since its launch, set to top 1 million available locations in the U.S. next month*, and now it will soon be making its first overseas expansion into the UK next month in over 250,000 locations, including London’s transportation system. The integration with Pinterest’s buyable pins also points to Apple’s ambition of integrating Apple Pay into ecommerce platforms. More importantly, the new inclusion of rewards and loyalty cards will offer brands a great platform to maintain their relationships with the loyal customers via built-in loyalty programs as well as personalized offers.

Apple Getting Into Content Curation
While it is still early to tell how much impact the Music and News apps will have on the digital publishing and music industry, respectively, Apple is clearly making an effort to take more control over content, taking on competitors such as Spotify and Facebook’s Instant Articles. For content creators, including brands, these could be interesting new channels to connect directly with fans, and, especially in the case of Music, lead to additional commerce opportunities such as ticket sales. It will also affect advertising, as publishers can sell ads directly and retain 100% of revenue, or use iAd and retain 70%.

Our full coverage of WWDC 2015 is here. Please contact Engagement Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) at the IPG Media Lab if you would like more detail or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

This is the second of our Fast Forward analysis. Please reply with any constructive criticism or feedback. We want these to be as useful as possible for you and your clients, and your feedback will help us immensely. You can read our first Fast Forward analysis on Google I/O Event here.

 

*Editor’s Note: updated on June 9, 2o15 12:40pm to include stats on Apple Pay in the states.

Mobile Payment Heats Up Again As Google Debuts Android Pay

Posted on by Lab Team

Earlier today at its annual I/O developer conference, Google officially unveiled its newest attempt at conquering mobile payment—a new Android Pay app that will power both in-app purchases and physical transactions in stores. Replacing the old Google Wallet app on mobile, Android Pay will become the universal payment solution in the Android ecosystem. Using tokenization and Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, as well as support for fingerprint authentication, Android Pay seems to work, quite frankly, just like Apple Pay. Unsurprisingly, it also comes with an API that will allow developers to incorporate payments into their apps.

Previously, Google has had a tough time getting major banks and credit card companies on board for their payment products, but things look different this time around. Retailers are eager to participate given the seamless integration of loyalty rewards, which Apple is likely to launch soon also. Three out of the four biggest wireless carriers in the states, save for Sprint, are among launch partners for Android Pay, along with all major credit card providers like Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AmEx.

Besides an NFC chip and the more recent Android OS (KitKat or higher), making it usable on more than half of active Android phones. Given Android’s over 1 billion active users worldwide, it may just be what Google needs to catch up with Apple in mobile payments. It remains to be seen whether Android Pay adoption for in-store purchases will help Google attribute sales to prior ad views.

Walmart Plans Premium Shipping Service And Tests Mobile Payment In China

Posted on by Lab Team

Walmart is set to challenge ecommerce overlord Amazon with its own premium shipping service. The No.1 brick-and-mortar retailer will reportedly start testing a yet-to-be-named unlimited free shipping service this summer to expedite the delivery of online orders to customers. Tentatively priced at $50 a year, it will cost half as much as Amazon Prime, which, however, also covers unlimited access to Amazon’s streaming service Prime Video.

In related news, Walmart is aiming to use convenience win over local customers in China by adding support for Alibaba’s Alipay, the most popular e-payment service in China. Customers will be able to check out by having their Alipay Wallet app scanned, and will then be rewarded with cash-back on their purchases. Considering that Walmart is not currently accepting Apple Pay in the US because of its allegiance to MCX’s still-in-beta CurrentC, one has to wonder if this new partnership with Alipay in China serves as a test of in-store mobile payment for the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer.

Taken together, these two moves by Walmart suggest a strong intention to bridge the gap between the physical world of retail and digital one. In order to succeed in both worlds, all retail brands will need to step up their ecommerce game while also finding new ways to improve the in-store shopping experience with digital convenience.

 

Square Email Marketing

Square To Leverage Customer Data Into Email Marketing

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: VentureBeat

Earlier today, mobile payment solution provider, Square announced its new expansion into email marketing. Aiming to help its cohort of businesses to engage with their customers, the company introduced a new tool suite that makes good use of its purchase and payment data to gain consumer insight and help businesses optimize their newsletter campaigns for better personalization and targeting. This marks the latest in Square’s continuous effort to diversify its revenue streams.

Header image taken from Square’s Official Blog

 

Microsoft Itching Close To Launching Its Apple Pay Competitor

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Business Insider

Months after the official launch of Apple Pay, Microsoft is finally catching up and readying the launch of its own mobile payment system. A few weeks ago at the WinHEC developer conference in Shenzhen, China, Windows showcased a “tap to pay” feature baked into Windows 10 phones. And now Idaho has reportedly approved the company’s plan to launch its own payment transfer service, which will undoubtedly be made available throughout the states.

Would You Pay With Your Face?

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Re/Code

Forget mobile payment—in the near future, customers may be able to complete a transaction with a selfie. At the recent CeBit Conference in Germany, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma demonstrated a payment system using facial recognition technology on a smartphone.

Currently being tested by Ant Financial, an Alibaba affiliate that also runs its Alipay payment service, this pay-with-your-face system is reported to be aiming for a 2017 public release.  No word yet on whether it could differentiate photos from a real person, but Ma did express his firm belief in the system replacing passwords and fingerprints as the preferred mobile payment method.

Everything We Know About Apple Watch So Far

Posted on by Lab Team

We are just four days away from Apple’s “Spring Forward” media event on Monday, March 9th, and all sources are indicating that it will be an opportunity for Apple to drum up momentum as the official release of the Apple Watch approaches.

Since the first announcement last September, we’ve learned about the WatchKit SDK, and a leaked companion mobile app, but everyone’s anxious to learn more. Some major highlights teased by Tim Cook in recent interviews include:

  • Fitness Tracking In addition to the now-confirmed bundled Workout and Activity apps, which allow users to custom program exercise routines and measure fitness statistics, third-party apps are also being allowed.
  • Hotels Apps will allow you to check-in to your hotel and even unlock your room at “some of the best hotels in the world.”
  • Business Applications Cook hinted that Salesforce, a long-time partner, is developing software.
  • Mobile Payment Continuing its Apple Pay push, Cook noted that Panera Bread is working on a payment app.

How many of these will be proven true? Follow the Lab’s live tweeting @ipglab or catch our recap after the event.

 

Header image taken from Apple Watch’s official webpage

Pizza Hut To Let You Order And Pay For Pizza With Your Car

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: VentureBeat

Pizza Hut, along with Visa and Accenture, announced at Mobile World Congress that they are working together to explore mobile and on-the-road purchases in connected cars. The trial plans to include a new Interactive Voice Control (IVR) feature that will let you talk to your car to place your order, while Visa Checkout, Visa’s online payment service, will let users make in-car payments seamlessly. Moreover, beacon technology will also be deployed at Pizza Hut restaurants to alert staff when the customer has arrived and is ready to pick up the order. If this works, the drive-thru of the future will be very efficient.

Update 3/5/2015: Not to be outdone, Domino’s is developing an ordering app on wearables to allow customers to place pizza orders from their Android Wear and Pebble smartwatches.