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CoverStory

From uniformity to diversity

Rod Hometh, payment veteran and adviser to Rocketpay
Group, saw payments reach an inflection point when
device manufacturers began to customize their
solutions. "Business owners wanted a customizable,
flexible platform they could take to any market," he
said. "Manufacturers began to focus on creating an
architecture that could make a midlevel payment do
what merchants wanted it to do."

Hometh said consumers want the same experience
everywhere, every time. They tend to get frustrated not
because technology is difficult, but because it's different
every place they go. "The Nirvana was the way it was,"
he said. "No matter where you went, or what you bought,
you'd swipe a card, press a green button and walk out."

We may get to a place where 80 percent of consumers are
dipping a card or tapping a phone, but we will never get
back to the former ubiquity of payments that required
no thought, he said, adding that low-ticket, low-risk
EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) has changed the
game. We used to forget how we paid for things; now
you might tap your phone, insert your card or swipe
your finger.

"Merchants may be enamored with large interactive
screens, but it can take years for some consumer-facing
technologies to catch on," Hometh said. "You have to
keep things unremarkable for consumers."

From plastic card to mobile wallet
The U.S. EMV migration has required system-wide
upgrades of hardware, software and host processing
technologies. As consumers and merchants adapt to
contact and contactless smart card technologies, they
are noticing the ease and speed of tapping at the POS.

"Near field communication (NFC), a payment scheme
used in mobile wallets and contactless cards, is past the
point of being new, but people are still getting used to
it," said Samuel Mulligan, Communications Specialist at
Mobeewave Inc., a technology company specializing in
NFC solutions. A tap, like a card swipe, takes one to two
seconds; a dip can take up to 10 to 12 seconds, he noted.
"Tapping is faster than dipping, and the convenience of
contactless payments helps to resolve friction at the till,"
Mulligan said. "NFC and mobile wallets are prevalent in
Canada, and adoption is growing in the United States."

NFC-enabled smartphones are removing barriers to
adoption across the globe by facilitating peer-to-peer
(P2P) and mobile commerce for anyone who wants to
pay or accept payment on a phone. Mulligan, who has
seen a diversity of approaches and use cases, mentioned
Australia has a 97 percent NFC-adoption rate, while the
United States is just getting started.

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