If you needed evidence of the rise of cryptocurrency in the US, you only have to look at the 2022 Super Bowl’s advertising. Of the many cryptocurrency-centric ads, Coinbase’s was so popular, it crashed its app within seconds. With crypto’s growing popularity, I’ve received a lot of questions on how it might impact retail, and in particular, the in-store payment experience.
The world of cryptocurrency is constantly changing. From the wild swings in value to imaginative new use cases for the currency, the industry is moving at a faster rate than anyone could imagine. Since Bitcoin has been in existence, it has been used as the standard payment model in ransomware attacks all over the globe, but it has also evolved as an important means to transfer value that many technology companies have helped enable. One of the most recent examples comes from AMC and their announcement that they will start accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a means of payment for movie tickets and concessions by end of 2021.
In my previous blog post, I talked about the rise of biometric authentication in typical payment environments. That market is currently dominated by phone-based biometrics where consumers authenticate the transfer of payment information on their device via a fingerprint scanner or face ID. For the merchant, it is a simple contactless transaction.
There has been a tremendous amount of conversation recently around biometrics and its role in payments. The idea that we can pay for goods and services without having to carry a wallet or even a phone is certainly appealing, but what’s the current state of play? And where are we headed?
In my previous blog post, I discussed the growth of QR codes as a payment method and the different types that are available in the market.
To recap, the first one is a Static QR Code that the merchants display for the consumers to scan and pay. The second one is a Dynamic QR Code – Merchant Displayed – which generates a unique QR code for every transaction for the merchant to display and the consumer to scan and pay. The third one is another Dynamic QR Code format – Consumer Displayed – which generates a unique QR code for every transaction on the consumer’s device for the merchant to scan and accept payment.
