Pervasive was pleased to have Brian Stein quoted in Mobile Commerce Daily’s recent article, “MasterCard, PayPal’s Venmo hit on geolocation to drive mobile payments” which looks at the recent trend of mobile payment providers integrating geolocation and the benefits that it can provide.
A number of retail and payment experts agreed with Brian’s assessment that ““Location based offers and other contextual based prompts will provide incremental value to consumers which will be essential for digital wallet adoption to grow” and “geolocation can help drive mcommerce. By providing targeted offers, advertisers can increase the click-thru-rate to yield higher purchase conversions, and otherwise drive m-commerce sales.”
When looking at the recent addition of geolocation to the P2P payment service Venmo, Brian was further cited, explaining the benefits of both P2P and merchant based payments:
From a peer-to-peer perspective, geolocation allows users to quickly identify and select nearby friends, an important feature since so many P2P transactions are initiated by a face to face interchange (i.e. splitting the check).
“Additionally, any payment transaction can quickly and easily be tied for future reference and/or historical reporting, to the user’s current location via GPS or check-in,” he said. “When you add merchants to the mix, the benefit case becomes even greater.
“Location based offers can provide timely discounts, and when used in combination with app-based ordering, having the user’s current location allows orders to be timed to complete when the user is en route to the store, much like Taco Bell’s recent offering.”
The digital payment and/or wallet landscape continues to evolve, and with providers continuing to add value added services, which leverage geolocation and other new technologies consumer demand will continue to rise. This, coupled with Host Card Emulation (HCE) and other trends that are leveling the playing field between carriers, payment processors and merchants will help NFC and “tap to pay” gain real traction over the course of the next year.
