Mobile Retail is About More Than Your Phone

As mobile payments go mainstream, could they be the solution to the credit card data breaches that have plagued retailers in recent years? Target estimated that costs associated with its 2013 data breach were about $160 million, and associated bank costs were over $200 million. These numbers don’t even take into account the value of fraudulent transactions (the bank’s problem) or lost sales as a result of lost consumer confidence (the retailer's problem). Target’s transaction volumes fell about 5 percent and revenue declined 5.5 percent, all attributable to the breach. What price are retailers willing to pay for broken trust?