Visa Sees the Cloud as Cornerstone of Retail’s Digital Transformation

Commerce is everywhere.

Consumers navigate brick-and mortar stores with confidence, wielding phones and wearables and even paying right in the aisles when we find what we want — waving the devices to transact, and leaving without friction.

That’s how we want it to be, at least. The payment terminal still dominates the physical store environment, where, by and large, we still queue up at registers, or maybe self service kiosks at the last bit of interaction before the transaction is over.

The payment terminals themselves … well, they’re workhorses, meant for heavy duty. They’ve been upgraded time and again as technology has changed, such as the chip card and EMV liability shift a few years ago.

But, in the wake of the pandemic and the whole-hearted embrace of contactless payments, many physical retailers — no matter the vertical — are grappling with the need to have a digital presence inside the store to keep customers engaged.  Ideally, these merchants can be unlocked from the shackles of having purpose-built, expensive, single-use hardware and software-laden point of sale (POS) on-premises.

In an interview with Karen Webster, Mary Kay Bowman, senior vice president and global head of payment and platform products at Visa, said  the cloud can empower face-to-face commerce at any time, anywhere, in any setting.

At a high level, Bowman said, the consumer wants to know that the transaction is happening and that it is secure — and they do not want to have to stand in line at a physical terminal in order to do so. Standing in line has become a point of friction, and companies are examining  where access to payments is absent.

As Bowman noted, there are things that occur inside an app and then there are things that occur in physical, face-to-face environments that are powered by an app — and increasingly, consumers want everything to be connected.

Solving the Connectivity Problem

“What we are focused on is solving the connectivity problem and accessibility problem,” she told Webster.

Earlier this month, Visa announced a new cloud-based payment platform, which can transform connected devices — and the innovative firms partnering with Visa in developing devices and services — into payment terminals.

The platform is geared toward helping acquirers and Internet of Things (IoT) firms move their payment processing software, and payment mindsets, beyond the confines of the terminal.

The platform, which also updates software automatically, has built-in security features and runs on the payment network’s data center. Visa said in its announcement that the platform debut comes in the wake of the success of “Tap to Phone,” which in turn enables phones and tablets to become POS devices.

With the Visa Acceptance Cloud (VAC) platform, said Bowman, wearables and parking meters — and even smart mirrors and cars — can accept payments and variations of payment options, such as buy now, pay later (BNPL).

VAC is currently being piloted in six locations: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

Read more: Visa Acceptance Cloud Launches to Advance Payments for POS, IoT, Acquirers

As Bowman told Webster regarding the VAC announcement, “This is an ecosystem and a network play — setting the stage for innovation we haven’t even thought of yet.”

Enabling payments acceptance, she said, levels the commerce playing field for even the smallest merchants, as they don’t have to have specialized devices on hand just to take payments.

Costs are reduced as well, as Visa has noted in the past that the average business owner can spend as much as $1,000 on POS hardware. Additionally, significant labor hours are spent on getting kernel certifications — necessary to accept EMV and mobile payments — to use that hardware.

“We’re reducing the load, the amount of work that needs to be done on the individual devices in order to read a chip, or a tap, at the point of sale,” she said.

The sale can be closed, and the payment can be committed, with a “thin experience” that Bowman said can go on beneath the surface and in the background, paving the way for that coveted, seamless commerce.  Leveraging the cloud means that merchants will be able to “recognize” the tokenized credentials that are increasingly becoming a staple of chip cards, wearables and phones.

Against that backdrop, reimagining the future of retail could bring commerce more fully into cars, into transit systems and across any number of daily tasks. Smart mirrors in boutiques might conceivably help drive a concierge-like experience for consumers, and serve as a point of checkout — from the dressing room itself.

“The cloud,” Bowman said, “opens up the opportunities to reinvent, and to power, these new experiences that sellers want to offer their customers.”