Category: Mobile Payments

These technologies can help to shorten lines, which could be promising for many industries.

Typically speaking, people hate waiting in line, and the fact that new data is indicating that mobile payments could help to cut wait times in a meaningful way is starting to boost its appeal to retailers, quick service restaurants, events, and other industries.

Any brand that has a business model based on rapid service will find faster transactions attractive.

In Chicago at the recent Interactive Customer Experience Summit from Networld Media Group, a number of important brands – including MoneyGram International, Dunkin’ Donuts and Taco Bell – came together to discuss the issue of wait times and the ways in which they could improve the customer experience. In their discussions, one of the most common denominators was that mobile payments and m-commerce helped to reduce the amount of time that a customer was required to wait in order to complete their full interaction with the brand for that session.

Taco Bell found that their mobile payments app helped to improve the customer experience in a range of ways.

At that fast food company, approximately 75 percent of all of the orders that are taken within their locations are customized. This, according to the Taco Bell Corp associate manager for operations, Veronica Luna. However, when the mobile app was introduced by the brand, what the company discovered was that customers had a tendency to add to their items instead of taking things away. Moreover, the average check amounts are higher among orders made by way of the app.

Furthermore, the company made it possible for customers to speed up their own experiences within the store. The customers who used the mobile app to place their orders were able to use that same app to check in as soon as they arrived at the location. This signaled to employees that the individual had arrived, so that they could begin filling that order and serve them as soon as possible. This reduced the amount of waiting for food prep and meant that the customer never needed to wait in line to actually place the order.

Moreover, with mobile payments, it meant that the customer simply needed to receive the order and leave, instead of needing to wait at a till to complete the transaction. This type of opportunity is starting to be seen to an increasing degree by different companies that are able to reduce the amount of time that customers have to wait while in the physical store locations.

ING introduces new feature for its banking app that will make mobile payments more convenient

Dutch bank ING has introduced a new service that will allow its customers to make mobile payments using their voices. The service is being incorporated into its mobile banking application and is meant to serve as a more convenient way to make payments without having to enter a password. The service is designed to highlight the convenient nature of mobile payments, which are becoming more popular in the Netherlands as well as other parts of the world.

Voice activation will bring more security to banking app

ING customers can use the new feature of their mobile banking application to speak a short phrase, which will be used to activate a mobile transaction. Users will pre-record the phrase for the application and this phrase will be stored as a file on their mobile device. ING believes that voice activation will add another layer of security to mobile payments, as a person’s voice can be as unique as their fingerprint. This is due to differences in vocal cavities and how different mouth movements can affect the sound of the voice.

Speech recognition is becoming more popular in the mobile commerce space

Nuance, a biometric company, is providing the speech-recognition technology that ING is using for the new service. Similar technology is used by several other organizations in order to determine the identity of consumers. The U.S. government, for instance, use speech recognition technology in cases where agencies are handling tax issues. This technology is largely used to reduce the prevalence of fraud and has been relatively successful in doing so in recent years.

Biometric technology could help mobile commerce appeal to consumers

Making mobile payments more secure has become a major priority for banks around the world. These banks have become heavily involved in the mobile commerce space, but consumers have voiced their concerns regarding their financial information. Biometric technology is expected to put many of these concerns to rest, which may make mobile payments significantly more attractive to consumers throughout the world.