When Richard Mader told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he thought mobile wallets would soon become “a heck of a convenience” for consumers, we at PYMNTS.com immediately wondered what he thought about the other side of the commerce equation. What’s the retailer’s take on mobile?
“We are seeing some adoption,” says Mader, who is the Executive Director of the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), itself a division of the National Retail Federation.
But the main reason there’s only some adoption, rather than a whole lot, is an ignition challenge. “The mobile revolution is really consumer led,” Mader says, and consumers aren’t yet wholly convinced of mobile’s security or convenience relative to plastic.
The continued rollout of mobile wallet technologies from major players like Isis, Google, Visa and MasterCard will help growth keep up. But Mader says it could be a different initiative pushed by the networks that really gets mobile adoption going on the merchant side.
That initiative: EMV. As liability for fraud becomes a greater issue with the approach of Visa’s EMV mandate, merchants will be more motivated to invest in new point-of-sale equipment anyway — at which point mobile acceptance will almost certainly be a consideration. “Now retailers have a direction,” Mader says.
Visa’s EMV mandate for 2015 is sure to impact payment acceptance technology at the point of sale. What’s your take on the next three years of mobile payment adoption at the register?
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