Technology is advancing, pressure from retailers mounting, and demands of the cardholder increasing. And there is increasingly less room for the staid
And, undoubtedly, new market segments are opening up. Taking equal inspiration from Steve Jobs and Kevin Costner, new and incumbent players alike are showing us what we want before we know we want it… "Build it and they will come!".
And of course, it is mobile point-of-sale technology that we never knew we wanted. And this is quickly being identified as a significant growth opportunity for merchant acquirers and hardware manufacturers, not to mention tech start-ups.
The idea has been around for a while of course – Square started the revolution in the US with its app and and magstripe-friendly hardware interface.
iZettle is bringing the game to Europe. But while iZettle’s technology is EMV compliant, it is not chip-and-PIN (it requires a signature).And while there are a number of fully chip and PIN-enabled devices in development, there is still room in the market for that proverbial killer app.
In the US, where for the time being at least, such things are of little concern, things are really starting to move. Square has done well to build a customer base – reporting USD5 billion in transactions in the the year ending April 2012 , but it is PayPal that makes the compelling case study.
One of the most powerful SME merchant acquirers in the world, the eBay subsidiary did over USD110 billion in e-commerce transactions last year. And it is in prime position to clean up in the bricks and mortar payments world. However, the company appears to be suffering from a problem that affects so many successful tech companies – opportunity overload.
While Square is pursuing its ambition keenly, PayPal is, by all accounts, struggling to keep up with the demand for its recently-launched POS solution. I understand that there are substantial delays getting the devices out to the many thousands of merchants that have already signed up.
This fast-moving area of payments has the potential to impact the industry substantially. It changes merchant expectations and calls into question the way acquiring services are delivered, and what represents value to retailers – and it won’t just be the small independent retailers asking those questions.
Go deeper with GlobalData
