POS and Retail

“Liquid” is the best descriptor for this shift because it illustrates the continuum of pay-with-points options, writes Barry Kirk, vice president of customer loyalty for Maritz Motivation Solutions.

Square burst on the payments scene nine years ago with a card reader that allowed small merchants to accept plastic card payments through their mobile devices. Its Square Cash app received considerably less fanfare — until now.

The rise of online and mobile commerce is forcing merchants to rapidly re-engineer their checkout options, while keeping an eye on emerging models that leverage artificial intelligence to streamline shopping — or bypass the store checkout process altogether, like Amazon Go.

The company’s shares have more than doubled in the past year, as investors have become more positive about its earnings potential in targeting bigger businesses.

As mobile technology improves and PayPal's in-store network gets larger, it is looking for more customized options to engage consumers.

Backed by the Clover platform, merchants using the devices can manage their businesses in real-time over an online backend portal that can be accessed from a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Consumers aren't leaving without paying, but are paying through an app that avoids the point of sale.

OEM and other mobile payments can feed sales, marketing and recurring transactions for lenders, according to Steve Yi, co-founder and CEO of MediaAlpha.

The retailer's foray into wealth management is a wake-up call for an industry that often overlooks female investors.

AiFi uses artificial intelligence, sensors and cameras to outfit stores with a checkout-free system that can deploy without regard to the differences in store sizes.

Banks and cardholders will be able to verify purchases, increase credit limit, add cards immediately, provide feedback to retailers, receive on-demand coupons, or upgrade card benefits.

American Express claims its rules allow it to better compete against other major card networks. The complaining states view anti-card steering rules as a way to block other networks from offering lower fees, thus resulting in retailers raising prices for consumers.

FitPay's wallet and digital payment platform, which will integrate with the tokenization platform, enables manufacturers of IoT and wearable devices to add contactless payment capabilities to their products.

Ingenico views the integration as a way to increase the use of loyalty programs during the payment process.

Retailers should also notice that each transaction with customers contains more than the currency, it contains the potential opportunity to establish a relationship, writes Franklin Chu, managing director of Azoya International.

There are practical lessons from Amazon's service model that can be applied elsewhere, writes Derek Corcoran, chief experience officer at Avoka.

Hot on the heels of the January debut of the first Amazon Go store in Seattle, the e-tailer is reportedly planning to open six more stores over the course of 2018. It's a surprising show of confidence from Amazon.

Amazon Go has swung far to the side of self-service as the company has maximized on technology and eliminated the value of face-to-face interactions. This is not be a recipe for success for every retailer, writes Jon Croy, co-founder and CMO of Point Inside.

By failing to protect their customers’ data, financial institutions and others in the payments ecosystem are risking trust, the most important currency they have, writes David Barnhardt, executive vice president of product at GIACT.

By investing in next generation strategies and shifting their mindsets about testing, organizations can better safeguard and control the payments process, providing a more reliable customer experience and better protecting one of their most important assets—their reputations, writes Steve Gilde, a director at Paragon Application Systems.