Carrying cash is getting old fashioned and last night I was the only one on the table shelling out the greens; everybody else from our group put a card down. Our server was less than thrilled, I am sure, but the times have changed and consumers like clients careless about the frown on the service providers face than their own convenience which is fine because everybody is one or the other at a given time.
The card and accompanying maths was less of an amusement than the imaginary scenario playing in my head; each person instead of handing out the credit cards, waves their phones; here Mr. server, please take my mobile wallet, and with six of those wallets in his hands, we would get to see a nice little juggling act to the payment register....
Less comical would have been a mobile POS with a near field reader and each person paying one by one, with phone wallet or something from the "old" wallet...
This reminded me that future of mobile payments, bright as it may be needs work. Half a century of ingrained human behaviors are less likely to fade away....with lets say half baked solutions, unless we just wipe away the other choices, which is not likely to happen in developed countries.
Here is how I would have framed my last get together, had I the pieces woven....
The card and accompanying maths was less of an amusement than the imaginary scenario playing in my head; each person instead of handing out the credit cards, waves their phones; here Mr. server, please take my mobile wallet, and with six of those wallets in his hands, we would get to see a nice little juggling act to the payment register....
Less comical would have been a mobile POS with a near field reader and each person paying one by one, with phone wallet or something from the "old" wallet...
This reminded me that future of mobile payments, bright as it may be needs work. Half a century of ingrained human behaviors are less likely to fade away....with lets say half baked solutions, unless we just wipe away the other choices, which is not likely to happen in developed countries.
Here is how I would have framed my last get together, had I the pieces woven....
Scenario:
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- Email or SMS is sent to group of friends, "who is up for dinner". The email/message may be originated from within the payment app on the smart phone.
- There is a link in the email and by clicking it you acknowledge or agree you will be joining.
- People meet up at the restaurant and their smart phones automatically checks them in or they touch some NFC sign somewhere on the restaurant door or side wall, or even through WiFi.
- Now the application on the smart phone of the organizer, the restaurant and everyone else, knows who actually made it to the place.
- When the bill comes the group tells the server to split the bill using a group id. (Lets assume the restaurant is running the "service provider" version of the app.)
- The cashier does just that with his mobile POS, which could have been a smart phone or a tablet and pushes the bill back.
- Everybody in the group who was in the restaurant receives their share of the bill on their phones
- At this point the organizer of the get together can use his app/phone to pay, and each person that actually checked in the restaurant is charged accordingly.
- A notification is sent to their smart phones. Each individual can accept the charge, using the group Id for the party and their own code or pin authentication.
- On the other hand everybody can be sent share of their bill and each can send the money themselves using the app. This can be done via the restaurant billing app or the organizer can push to the participants.
- In either case the user can accept the charge with one click plus some authentication.
- The restaurant receives confirmation on their app that the bill is paid and everybody is on their merry way.
This can be further expanded as:
- Everybody's order gets recorded in the same application. The app has a link to the ordering system. Now the restaurant can push individual bills to everybody ... going dutch, the modern way... no more doing the division...
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In this scenario the phone acts as a payment facilitator, a mobile wallet, replacing not only the cash/credit but also the card based payment norms, such as touch swipe, signature etc.
There are two big problems in the whole affair... who will adapt this....changing something of a norm is not an easy task.
Secondly the bigger issue is integration. It is easier to imagine that all the players and their infrastructure, from restaurant ordering systems to merchant payment networks, banks and carriers, are playing nice and everything is seamless. But this is much harder to implement in a generalized fashion, with multiple vendor and service provider support.
I do believe that the consumer behavior that I and my friends exhibit can be changed, if each component in the above use case is tightly knit. To make the "convenience" argument for the use case, we need one app that generates the message, collects the responses, keeps track of check-ins to the restaurant, is connected to restaurant systems and has a payment back end be it through carriers, other credit/banking networks or the app stores.
Simplicity, ease of use, and convenience are the key considerations for driving user acceptance. To that end minimizing the user interaction with their app down to few steps such as accepting invitation, payment authentication and some status messages would make for a limited but convenient interaction. There cannot be hidden fees such as each time the app is used a certain charge is made, etc. The technology must aim to replace the existing norms with (perception of) convenience at the same or lesser costs to its target beneficiaries .....
There are two big problems in the whole affair... who will adapt this....changing something of a norm is not an easy task.
Secondly the bigger issue is integration. It is easier to imagine that all the players and their infrastructure, from restaurant ordering systems to merchant payment networks, banks and carriers, are playing nice and everything is seamless. But this is much harder to implement in a generalized fashion, with multiple vendor and service provider support.
I do believe that the consumer behavior that I and my friends exhibit can be changed, if each component in the above use case is tightly knit. To make the "convenience" argument for the use case, we need one app that generates the message, collects the responses, keeps track of check-ins to the restaurant, is connected to restaurant systems and has a payment back end be it through carriers, other credit/banking networks or the app stores.
Simplicity, ease of use, and convenience are the key considerations for driving user acceptance. To that end minimizing the user interaction with their app down to few steps such as accepting invitation, payment authentication and some status messages would make for a limited but convenient interaction. There cannot be hidden fees such as each time the app is used a certain charge is made, etc. The technology must aim to replace the existing norms with (perception of) convenience at the same or lesser costs to its target beneficiaries .....
