I remember when each morning before my parents left me at school, they used to give me some bills to buy a snack at break time. At that time, it was necessary to use paper money and it was part of our daily lives in our societies. Today my wife and I make electronic bank transfers to my son’s school so he can buy snacks that, when I was a child, I used to pay with coins and bills in the school cafeteria. How have times changed!
And the point is that because of the way societies and their needs are evolving, we will go out only with what we are wearing and our cellphones, because that will be the only things we will need. And not only to pay, also for daily activities such as opening our houses or cars, activate alarms, turn on or off devices remotely, the same way it is happening with the so-called “internet of things”.
The topic about shopping is already handled in these contexts. There are studies which refer that many people in the world have lost the “fear” to enter their banking card number by internet through their mobile devices, increasing their traffic 50%, thanks to certain improvements applied to the topic of usability and geolocation of services. It is projected that transactions of this kind will go over from 300 million dollars reached in 2015, to more than 600 million in 2019.
Another point to take into account is that more than 25% of smartphones users in the world, have decided to pay through their cellphones, and more than a half assure that they would do it more often if there were promotions or discounts. Is it also worthy to note the fact that women are in charge of the non-digital shopping world; meanwhile the online buyer’s profile is men who are between 25 and 34 years old, they spend more on books or music, and they do it from their computers using platforms which offer security when paying, such as PayPal.
The most common payment way in the world is payment through “point of sale (POS) terminal”, where cellphones act as banking cards, which through a contactless connection, makes possible the connection to the bank making direct payments.
The belief is that for the year 2020, 50% of payments will be made this way. It is believed that in the last years, e-commerce has grown 20%, making development of applications of the Wallet kind easier, and that facilitates access to all information related to your cards or purchases in different stores.
From Apple to Microsoft, going through Google and the very same Visa, have started to work on platforms to pay the phone, the same way this can be made through the already known PayPal. Facing this scenario, what are you waiting to polish these details in your virtual store?