Plastic Payment Habit — Not Easy to Kill
NEW ORLEANS — Better. Faster. Stronger.
Those three traits are requirements of any emerging payment player that aims to kick the U.S. consumer’s habit of using plastic cards for payments. And that’s no small order, as consumers are pretty OK with paying by plastic.
That notion became wildly apparent today in several sessions and panels that dissected NFC’s upcoming flight at the Mobile Banking & Emerging Applications Summit. In other words, cellphone payments need to do something for consumers that plastic can’t in order to convince the majority of Americans to use the device to make payments.
“Consumers are used to taking out plastic,” said Brent Samuels, senior manager at First Annapolis, during a panel. “Mobile has to deliver something better and satisfy consumers that there is a reason to transition.”
Some cited the digital wallet and its promise of relevant loyalty and couponing offspring as such an added value required to ignite consumer acceptance of relying on their phones for, well, everything, including banking.
Though mobile payments offer consumers enough value proposition to drive “significant” adoption rate, ubiquity among consumers will not be achieved until the technology benefits the consumer’s entire shopping experience, said Jim Stapleton, chief sales officer for ISIS, during the same panel.
Though I whole-heartedly agree with this argument, in conversations I had with a number of smaller banks and credit unions today, I couldn’t help but wonder: are they ready to hear this message? Some institutions have yet to deploy mobile banking solutions, let alone wrap their brains around the budding digital wallet world. But still, regardless of where players are at today or are not, payments change is coming, and the players leading the innovation need to ensure they are letting consumers know why.
