Mobile Payments

While retailers are diving headfirst into mobile payments, consumers appear to be a bit more hesitant. Usage of digital wallets remains at less than one-third, even though a surprisingly high number of U.S. consumers — 80 percent — recognize the technology as an alternative to cash-based transactions, according to a survey of more than 2,000 smartphone, tablet and desktop users from local search and digital marketing research firm Thrive Analytics.

Last month, retail and design chain Lilly Pulitzer announced a new addition to its eight In The Pink Stores. Pulitzer piloted this innovative program in its flagship store by removing all standard registers and replacing them with more flexible, 100 percent mobile point-of-sale solutions powered by Springboard Retail and devices including iPads and iPhones. Similar to the Apple Store experience, Pulitzer customers can now check out wherever and whenever they happen to be in-store. Making the checkout experience flexible has freed up coveted retail space within the stores and enhanced the overall Pulitzer aesthetic while providing customers with added convenience.

New payment apps are trying to replace your physical wallet with a seamless, Internet-connected experience known as the mobile wallet. But these technologies — from giants like PayPal, Google and Chase as well as upstarts like Venmo and Square — are still in their early stages, and as they vie for attention and users, many consumers are failing to see the point, according to a report released in late March by the Federal

Ahead of a Federal Trade Commission conference Wednesday on the privacy implications of mobile device tracking in stores, airports, hotels and other public places, a new website is launching where consumers can opt out of having their location information collected. Going live Tuesday, the opt-out platform was built by The Wireless Registry for the Future of Privacy Forum, which developed a code of conduct adopted by 11 mobile location analytics firms. 

U.S. shoppers made Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6 percent increase in online sales, according to the latest cloud-based analytics findings from IBM. Mobile sales led the way, exceeding 17 percent of total online sales, an increase of 55.4 percent year-over-year. Cyber Monday also capped the highest five-day online sales period on record — from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday — which grew 16.5 percent over the same period in 2012. 

In its latest article, The Retail Organization of 2023: The Customer is King (For Real), Shop.org's Think Tank group projects what the retail organization will look like in 10 years. Given how rapidly the customer has evolved in just the past three years, plus ever-higher expectations for seamless service across touchpoints, the Think Tank suggests that a successful retailing organization of the future must operate very differently from today. The mandate to retailers: devote significant time and investment now to consciously build on the modern retail organization.