Civic Pay Puts Blockchain to Use in Mobile Payments, Unattended Retail

While mobile payments have struggled quite a bit in recent days trying to get users in the fold, some astute payments service providers have seen where key points of value can make a lot of difference. Civic Network’s Civic Pay brings several of these key value points together under one roof, and is bringing this mobile payments platform to use in the unattended retail front.

Civic Pay offers many of the best features a mobile payments system can offer, and under one handy umbrella. It’s got not only a payments platform, but also identity verification and a rewards platform built in. Thanks to that sheer range of options, it’s drawn several new partners in the automated retail sector. Among these are such names as Retail Automated Concepts, Fastcorp Vending, the Global Vending Group and nine others besides, at last report.

It’s a good time for Civic Pay to get in on the unattended retail action, too; reports note that there are currently just over three million connected vending machines in play worldwide. With numbers on the trajectory they’re on, according to a Berg Insight study, that number will nearly double to 5.4 million by 2022.

Civic Networks’ co-founder and CEO, Vinny Lingham, noted “Vending machines represent an introduction to the mass market, where people can see how digital identity functions in the real world, as well as opening up an entirely new market for automated retail.”

The numbers make it pretty clear that supporting automated retail is going to be a good plan going forward. With vending machine totals poised to double—and some stores even going the unattended retail route thanks to developments like Amazon’s—mobile payments have a great potential here to shine as the way to pay at the vending machine. Since vending machines also commonly take cash, however, mobile payments have to stand out. With Civic Pay incorporating identity management—thus opening up the possibility for age-gated, adult-oriented products—and rewards systems into its own platform, “standing out” should be much less a problem.

Civic Pay has an excellent platform from which to attack the vending machine market, and it may well prove to be just the niche to pursue.