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Mobile Payment Programs - Here or To Go?

Posted by Travis Powers | Tue, Sep 25, 2012 @ 09:00 AM

payment choicesTravis Powers, Vice President of ISO and Partner Relations will be at the Western States Acquirer Association Meeting this week where he's sure to be surrounded with a multitude of alternative payment applications and check processing services.  He recently had a chance to see Google Wallet in action (or not) and wonders ..."will Google fix my wallet?" 

As I was standing in line at Pete’s coffee the other morning, the Google Mobile Wallet display caught my eye.  I started to read the sign and began to wonder how this relates to the average consumer? Is there a real fix here on something that is broken, or is this just another cool way to make payments appear to be easier?

I guess I could be considered a "jaded financial professional." I always ask myself what it means when something new like this hits the payment landscape.  I have been in the check processing/guarantee business for almost 20 years and during that time have seen a change in the payments industry every year, if not every month!

As I approached the counter to order my coffee, I asked the clerk what he thought of the Google Mobile Wallet as a means of payment.  Once I asked the question I realized I was doing some “high tech research." I also realized I was asking a 20 year old college student serving coffee for a living about how his customers prefer to make payments. I patiently waited for his response. 

He answered,  "We have had this for over a year and in all that time I can only remember 8 or 9 people making a payment using it."  This led me to my next question:  “Why do you think that is?  Why don’t more people want to use it?”  He replied, “I just don’t think people really trust it.”

The conversation went back and forth for a few minutes and I still wondered if he really understood how the mobile payments were being made, and if he just didn’t want all his financial information out there.

I have to say that I really found it odd that he felt that way.  My opinion has always been that younger people typically gravitate towards the newest and most convenient forms of payment. As I often joke, "Everyone knows that old people write checks and young people use the easiest and fastest way to pay."

It seems to me that there are so many different mobile payment solutions out there, maybe too many. With so many options, do we run the risk of confusing our customers? Someone is always trying to fix the "payments problem" that I hear ISOs talking about all the time.  Ultimately, I have to ask myself how hard is it to pull your card out of your wallet, swipe it and sign?

Maybe I am just a "jaded financial professional." Go ahead and call me a dinosaur, but do we really have a payments problem or is what we have good enough? Let me know what you think. If you're going to be at WSAA this week in Huntington Beach, be sure to stop by the CrossCheck booth. There are some cool new things going on with checks, too.

 

Topics: Independent Sales Organization (ISO)

Written by Travis Powers