On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. At the time of writing, hundreds of thousands of lives and businesses have been affected. With multiple countries issuing bans on travel across borders and ordering shutdowns of cities and towns, many businesses are seeing the virus take its toll.
Biometric technology has become routine for the everyday consumer, and experts predict that 1.5 billion mobile users will rely on it for device authentication by 2023. As use of biometrics grows, many merchants are looking into how the technology can be used in the retail environment to bring simplicity and convenience to customer experience.
PCI SSC is dedicated to providing necessary guidance to the payments industry during evolving circumstances related to COVID-19. The current climate is forcing more global organizations to a remote-work model. As organizations make this shift, it is important to maintain security practices to protect payment card data. The following are excerpts related to remote work best practices taken from the PCI SSC Information Supplement “Protecting Telephone-Based Payment Card Data”.
Cloud-based POS solutions have been trending upwards over the last two years, with more ISVs offering their small and mid-sized customers an alternative to traditional on-premises, server-based POS systems. While retail ISVs are on the front lines of this evolution, other segments are following suit to meet customer demand. According to Hospitality Technology’s 2018 POS Software Trends Report, 61 percent of merchants said they want their next POS system to be cloud-based.
When you look at in-store technology today, the retail environment has evolved and is successful in providing a good customer experience. But a lot of that innovation such as certain payment experiences has not made its way into the grocery stores. This is largely due to the need to balance high scan volumes by maintaining short checkout lines. But as customer expectations for an elevated experience are starting to shift, there is a growing demand for innovation in the industry.
