The payments industry in the U.S. is evolving fast and merchants across almost every vertical needs to think about incorporating mobile point of sale (mPOS) into their payment strategies. We caught up with payments industry experts to learn how the landscape for mPOS has changed in the last few years and how it can benefit merchants across different verticals.
A few years ago, there was considerable buzz in the retail industry about the enormous potential of mobile point of sale (mPOS) and its ability to transform the in-store customer experience. With online competitors driving new consumer expectations and shopping behavior, this was seen as a key strategy in blunting the competition and giving brick and mortar merchants an upper hand.
Many independent software vendors (ISVs) in the US service a wide range of industries, and with last October’s liability shift it can be a daunting task for them to get to market with EMV-enabled mPOS solutions that fit their customers’ needs. In our previous blog post, we discussed 3 key challenges that ISVs face while enabling EMV for their mPOS solutions, including the complexities of implementing EMV as compared to magstripe, the time-consuming certification process and high costs. However, when following the right steps, ISVs can combat these challenges and get to market quickly with their EMV-enabled mPOS solutions in just three easy steps.
In 2015, the US became the last developed country to migrate to EMV – a new more secure payment acceptance system. EMV has had tremendous success in many other countries, such as the UK, Australia, and Canada, in curbing credit card fraud. Merchants in the US are now required to upgrade their payment technology to accept EMV cards to avoid the liability of any chargebacks due to fraud. Many big box retailers have proactively upgraded their payment technology to accept EMV, however, many small merchants are falling behind.
The evolution of the POS led to the founding of mPOS which revolutionized the world of payments. Among many benefits, mPOS enables merchants to accept multiple forms of cashless payments anywhere. Whether it is within the store in the aisle or even out on the streets at a farmer’s market, merchants are no longer limiting themselves to accepting just cash as payment. According to a report by 451 Research the global mPOS installed base will grow at a CAGR of 32 percent between 2015 and 2019 – exceeding 54 million units by the end of that time frame. With this growth in sight, retailers, ISVs, and developers need to think about integrating payments into their innovative business applications. A big obstacle for these ISVs and developers is the EMV migration. The long and expensive process of EMV certification delays an ISV’s go-to-market plan for their solution. What these ISVs and developers need is a power SDK to do the heavy lifting of these certifications for them.
