First Data Corp. called 2012 the “year of universal commerce,” meaning commerce happens anywhere, anytime and on any type of device.
So 2013 and the years that follow will be about building a framework of technology to streamline the modern shopping experience, says Stan Wilson, senior vice president of North American business development for the Atlanta-based transaction processor.
Today’s consumers rely on e-commerce, brick-and-mortar merchants, mobile devices, social media, offers and promotions to inform and facilitate their purchases. A breadth of options, and the uncertainty that comes with that, will test the payments industry in the coming year, Wilson says.
A confluence of trends – the transition to EMV chip card acceptance, the emergence and proliferation of smart devices, mobile commerce and a suite of online and offline applications – is forcing merchants to adapt to the changing landscape.
“One of the bigger challenges is for merchants in the marketplace to understand, ‘Where do I place my bets?’” Wilson says.
First Data last year set out to link rewards, discounts and promotions to payment cards so that customers can redeem them in a seamless way, without having to search their pockets for paper coupons or scan their inbox for online deals. First Data’s OfferWise platform enables publishers and application developers to attach electronic offers for consumers to redeem at the point of sale. First Data launched that technology in the past year and so far has enabled 500,000 merchants to use it.
The realm of universal commerce will only continue to grow in 2013, Wilson says. The shift to EMV chip card acceptance will likely drive the proliferation of tablets as POS systems over the next 24 months. Meanwhile, the industry can expect an accelerated adoption of mobile commerce in the coming year, with new services undergoing trials and exploration.
“There’s so much change and so much coming, folks get nervous and sit on their hands,” Wilson says.
The industry has experienced more change in the past two to five years than it has in decades, and that’s not going to taper off anytime soon, Wilson says. “The next two to three years will make the last three to five years look slow,” he says.
Deploying new technology will position merchants to lead in innovation, Wilson says.
