Tag: mobile payments

A pilot program is now underway using QuickPay for WeChat customers in the country.

McDonald’s is now running a pilot project using QR code payments with a cashback offer. Customers using WeChat can get 50% cash back when they use the QuickPay service. This is exclusive to select restaurants in South Africa.

The goal is to encourage people who are already using the social messaging app to pay with their smartphones.

Participating restaurants are located in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Customers using the WeChat mobile app are being offered a special 50% cashback offer. This is mean to encourage them to use the QuickPay QR code payments at McDonald’s in a participating location.

This incentive is meant to help to encourage customers to try the mobile payments for the first time. By showing them how easy it is to pay for an order simply by presenting the QR codes at the point of sale so they can be scanned, McDonald’s hopes that consumers will be taken with the service and will continue to use it.

The QR code payment cashback offer is available to the first 20,000 customers to use the service.

Those customers will receive 50% cash back when they pay for their meals with their smartphones. According to the McDonald’s South Africa chief marketing officer, Daniel Padiachy, “We are continuously searching for innovative ways to enhance our customers’ experience.” He added that “We believe that WeChat’s Quick Pay will further assist us in upholding these principles.”

The WeChat app first launched in the country in November 2015. The app is owned by Tencent, the ecommerce giant from China. Payments through the service have been made possible in South Africa through a partnership with Standard Bank.

WeChat makes it possible for users to make P2P transfers as well as to scan QR codes to make payments in-store at any of 30,000 merchants across the country that support the SnapScan platform. The mobile app can also be used to purchase wireless services such as airtime and data, as well as to pay certain utility bills.

While Quick Pay is functioning within the SnapScan WeChat feature, that QR code payments option is currently available exclusively at McDonald’s.

Industry analysts had predicted that Apple would kick smartphone wallets into gear but that might not be it.

When Apple Pay was launched, many analysts believed this would be the start of powerful mobile payments trends. They felt that Apple was the key to the mainstream adoption of mobile wallets. That said, that wallet app has now been available for about two years and adoption has been slower than anticipated.

Some analysts are now saying that the start of the widespread use of mobile payments won’t happen for some time.

A couple of years ago, mobile payments trends were expected to become the next big thing. By now, it would be commonplace to see shoppers using their smartphones in-store to pay for groceries, clothing and other purchases. It would be routine to use a mobile device instead of a credit card or debit card at a checkout counter.

However, mobile wallets have not taken off as expected. This has been the case both among mobile device users and among retailers. Now Fitch Ratings financial industry group director Michael Taino is predicting that the rate of adoption for mobile payments won’t just be slightly slower than expected. It will be much slower.

Taiano predicts that mobile payments trends won’t truly take off for multiple decades.

In an interview with Fortune magazine, Taiano was quoted as saying that “This could be a multi-decade change that occurs.” He said that the adoption by consumers and retailers may be similar to the experience seen in the growth of e-commerce. He pointed out that as large as e-commerce now is and as much as it has grown over 20 years, it still represents only 8 percent of retail spending in the United States.

Taiano recently published a report based on his conclusions and the evidence that has led him to make them. He underscored a number of barriers that have stood in the way of mainstream mobile wallet adoption.

One hurdle in the way of mobile payments trends progress has been the lack of incentive to consumers. Shoppers find credit and debit card use to be simple, familiar and accepted in the majority of places they shop. Therefore, at the moment they don’t have much motivation to change those easy and convenient habits.