Mobile Payments’ Biggest Problem: A Lack of Considering the Customer

While there have been no shortage of developments in the mobile payment space over the last couple of years, the actual use of mobile wallet systems has been less than active.

In fact, some studies suggest that mobile banking has taken off at a rate to dwarf mobile wallet systems.

A couple of new reports have combined to suggest that there’s one root cause that the customer isn’t taking up business’ proposition of mobile payments in wide number: a plain lack of consideration for the customer.

A report from Applause notes that some customers are experiencing “loyalty fatigue” in response to the sheer number of loyalty programs out there.

The way that businesses are approaching the problem isn’t exactly helping matters; with every cashier from Barnes and Nobel to Panera Bread and beyond required by stern upper management to ask if the buyer “has a card” or some variant therein, it’s easy to see where the customer can feel a bit put-upon.

Mobile payments programs should have helped with that, automatically recording the user’s status in a rewards program. Yet, it’s seldom that simple.

Some note that the process is proving more cumbersome than it was without the app, and that’s not the direction to go.

Worse, as word from PayToo CEO Michel Poignant points out, there’s not much incentive for users to stop doing what they’re already doing-paying with a card or with cash-and switching to the smartphone.

Loyalty programs could have helped with that, but if they’re still as cumbersome as Walgreens’ reportedly is, it’s small wonder they aren’t.

While it’s likely impossible to make a mobile payments program that’s simpler than cash where mobile payments can really shine is by not only incorporating a loyalty program, but making it so easy that it almost looks automatic.

It does all the heavy lifting; it knows if this is your ninth or tenth purchase. It knows when you get your free thing or your discount, and it tells you that now is the time.

If a purchase can’t be made simpler, then it must be made more valuable. The loyalty program can be the key to it all, but it has to be better than it is now, on average, to get there.

That improvement should turn the picture around and give mobile payments its ultimate opportunity for success.