Tag: mobile payments

Major event will utilize wearable technology to allow people to pay for goods

Lullapalooza 2014 will be supporting mobile payments through the use of wearable technologies. The event’s organizer has announced that those attending the festival in August will be able to use high-tech wristbands to make transactions. This represents one of the largest events in which mobile payments and wearable technology are combined. While wristbands with imbedded RFID chips are not something new to mainstream events like Lullapalooza, they are most typically used to grant people access to particular areas and not for mobile payments.

RFID-equipped wristbands will make mobile purchases possible

Plastic wristbands equipped with RFID chips are to be used to the festival. Once a visitor enters the festival grounds, they will be able to use these wristbands as a way to pay for goods at the various stalls at the event. These wristbands can also be used at the events bars and payments are made through the use of mobile terminals that are capable of reading the wristband’s RFID chip.

Festival goers need to upload their financial details to the Lullapalooza website before they can use their wristbands

Before the wristbands can be used, festival goers will have to upload their financial information into the Lullapalooza website. Once this has been accomplished, the wristbands will be sent out before the beginning of the festival. The wristbands will not only accommodate mobile payments, of course, and will function as a way to monitor festival entry as well. This is one of the more common uses for such wristbands and RFID chips are typically used to admittance more so than for mobile transactions.

Wristbands could make paying for goods at the festival safer and easier

Mobile payments have become quite popular in a variety of sectors, but they are new to prominent events like Lullapalooza. Making transactions easier for festival goers is one of the reasons the event has opted to use its new wristbands. The wristbands also remove the need for people to carry around physical currency, which could cut down on the instances of theft that occur at the festival.

According to a recent report, consumers like using quick response (QR) codes to make in store purchases.

The latest study form Nielsen found that consumers who use their smartphones to make purchases in physical stores, prefer to make mobile payments that involve QR codes, and that 45% of the 3,784 respondents said that they use this particular system to check out with their mobile phone.

40% of consumers surveyed use mobile apps as their preferred way to pay for merchandise.

The over 3,700 survey participants were made up of individuals who were 18 years of age or older and who had used their mobile device (tablet or smartphone) for banking, shopping, or paying within 30 days of the survey taking place. The income of users who carried out mobile payments varied extensively. For instance, the report found that the highest usage occurred among consumers who made over $100,000 and less than $50,000.

According to Nielsen’s analysis, “Digital is starting to transform how consumers pony up cash for their everyday purchases.” It added that “for consumers using mobile payment technology, digital is already the norm.”

In addition to QR codes, other digital payment methods that were popular among mobile users included NFC (near field communication), such as Isis and Google Wallet, and using a mobile phone scanner to scan a code.

QR codes make mobile transactions easy for cashiers and customers.

The quick response code mobile payment method is easy for both the cashier and the consumer because all the cashier has to do is scan the QR code on the consumer’s phone just as they would any bar code. Once scanned, the payment is processed and completed.

When these cubed-shaped codes first became trendy, they were popping up on everything, everywhere, from product packages and brochures to museums and restaurants. However, these codes, which have the ability to store a considerable amount of digital data, have been losing ground and some people feel that they have become irrelevant. That being said, considering the responses Nielsen received for its study, it’s clear that when it comes to the realm of mobile payments, QR codes are well liked by consumers.