As the mobile payments market heats up with entries like MasterPass from MasterCard, mobile payment player Square continues to forge new ground.

Last November, Square, the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, scored a coup by getting Starbucks to accept mobile payments in some 7,000 locations. Users of Square Wallet could also browse menu information and store hours, gain access to their transaction history and even explore nearby businesses. Now Square is adding new features to Square Register so it is all the more attractive to quick-service restaurants.

The move by Square is significant. For the most part, the brand's customer base is comprised of individual merchants, including taxi drivers, food truck owners and people who provide personal services. By adding features such as the ability to modify orders and customize kitchen tickets, Square is hoping to further penetrate the food business.Continue reading...

This is not your grandfather’s retail environment.

In fact, with Target joining the likes of Nike, BMW and Mondelez in launching a mobile incubator/accelerator and funding developers to come up with apps that will take shopping into the future, it might seem more like your grandkids’. Target announced a contest earlier this month called “Co. Labs & Target Retail Accelerator,” that dangles a $75,000 prize to whoever develops the best new mobile experience for the company.

Target is looking for “transformative, technology-driven” ideas that should incorporate at least one of the company’s four priorities:Continue reading...

Retailers are trying to cope with the challenge of an increasingly mobile consumer who conducts life digitally. This means meeting consumers' expectations on a whole new playing field: the mobile device.

According to Interbrand's just-released Best Retail Brands 2013 report, "retailers are mobilizing to address the larger issues around digital: Where and how does it fit into the organization? How can development teams be reorganized and silos lowered to accommodate a multichannel approach? How will the brand's culture change in response?"

While mobile sales are insignificant now, they are growing rapidly. In-store mobile payments almost quadrupled last year, and PayPal alone processed around $14 billion in mobile payments in 2012, according to Business Insider. That means mobile payments need to be a key part of future retail strategy. Just last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report, "Paper, Plastic... or Mobile?" The FTC cites a KPMG survey that found that 83 percent of executives in retail, financial services, technology and telecommunications believe mobile payments will see widespread consumer adoption by 2015.

Another recent study, by JPMorgan, divides the current state of the mobile commerce market: mobile acceptance (any mobile-based payment solution), mobile wallets (applications that enable consumers to use mobile devices for payment instead of credit or debit cards) and mobile commerce (e-commerce via any mobile device).Continue reading...

It may seem counter-intuitive, but MasterCard and Visa are in the midst of a technology war that may some day eliminate plastic credit cards.

At the recent Mobile World Congress, MasterCard introduced a mobile payments system called MasterPass, while Visa announced mobile payment partnerships with Samsung and Roam, a maker of point-of-sale systems. Both MasterCard and Visa, as well as others including Square, PayPal and Affirm, newly launched by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, are going after the same golden ring: the emerging mobile payments market.

MasterCard's MasterPass is a good example of where mobile payments technology is headed. According to Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer for MasterCard, "MasterPass brings together all of the ways we pay for things, from traditional plastic cards to digital wallets, and gives consumers the ability to make a payment from wherever they are and with one simple experience." MasterPass will offer checkout services that support anything from tags, mobile devices and QR codes used at point-of-sale to a simplified checkout process for online retailers. It will also provide "digital wallets" that banks, merchants and partners can adapt for their own use, featuring an open system that even MasterCard competitors can use. Continue reading...

Back in January 2011, Starbucks became the first national retailer to offer its own mobile payment technology combined with a loyalty program. It led to more than 100 million mobile transactions occurring in its U.S. stores since the launch. 

Now, in a move to push mobile commerce even further, Starbucks is accepting payments in some 7,000 retail locations via Square, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's mobile payment app for iOS and Android smartphones. In addition to laying out cash for that latte, users of Square Wallet can browse menu information and store hours, gain access to their transaction history, and even explore nearby businesses. Since Square Wallet is linked to a debit or credit card, there's never a need to reload a balance, and a digital receipt appears instantly.

It's not only been a huge boost for the Square brand (as Dorsey tweeted, "Immensely proud of the teams at Square and Starbucks: 7,000 stores launched 3 months TO THE DAY after signing the deal. #nailedit"). The announcement by Starbucks seems to come at a time of increased activity that could make 2013 the year of mass adoption of mobile payment technology. Indeed, Dorsey this week announced that "Square is now facilitating over $10 billion of commerce annually for small businesses across the US. Up $2 billion in just 2 months."Continue reading...

Tesco made headlines a year ago when its HomePlus retail subsidiary in South Korea tested a virtual store in a Seoul subway station, showcasing items that could be scanned and ordered by smartphone for home delivery, while Peapod is testing virtual grocery shopping in the U.S.

Now Walmart is testing a similar idea in Toronto in partnership with Mattel. The retail and toy giants are teaming up on what's described as Canada's first pop-up virtual toy store, enabling QR code-based shopping of Mattel brands — including hot toys from Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price and Thomas & Friends brands — to holiday shoppers.

The pop-up is located in the city's massive PATH underground walkway, a retail concouse that connects downtown buildings and and an array of businesses to Toronto's Union Station rail commuter hub. It may find a ready pool of virtual shoppers, as it will run for four weeks in the same location where Wells.ca tested a QR-enabled store in April.Continue reading...

As Engadget puts it, "Three carriers, nine phones, one long way to go." AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile finally launched their joint venture Isis Mobile Wallet app for smartphone payments and discounts at "hundreds" of participating merchants (basically, "wherever contactless payments are accepted" according to a tweet) in Austin, Texas (where it hit SXSW earlier this year) and Salt Lake City, Utah.Continue reading...

News America Marketing (NAM), publisher of coupons in the U.S. and Canada, in partnership with thinaire, a cloud-based platform for NFC marketing campaigns, and Kraft, recently teamed up on a retail innovation pilot in the San Francisco area using smartphone technology.

The experience focused on drill-down user engagement and activation through tap and engage technology, increasingly integrated in consumer’s lives. Predictions are there will be 630 million NFC-enabled smartphone users by 2015.

The program launched at five grocery stores in the Bay Area, embedding readable RFID (radio frequency identification) chips within shelftalks promoting the Kraft cheese and Nabisco cookie brands.

Shoppers were invited to tap their smartphones for interactive experiences that included a series of recipe interactions, instant download of the brand's i-Food Assistant app, input on other Kraft products and sharing on social media.Continue reading...