As methods of payment continue to evolve, they have become varied across demographics. While few consumers carry significant amounts of cash, and even fewer write checks, more and more are using a growing number of non-cash alternatives to pay for products and services. Credit and debit cards are generally the...
Blog
Subscription-Based Revenue: It’s Time to Reevaluate Your Business Model
Subscription-based revenue models offer clear advantages to businesses, and many merchants may be overlooking opportunities for their business to grow in this space. Companies like Netflix and Hulu naturally lean toward a subscription revenue model, but less obvious products have found their way into the subscription space as well. The...
Should Your Organization Find a Loyalty Partner?
If a loyalty member is part of competitor programs as well, are they actually loyal? In many verticals, consumers follow incentives to register for competing loyalty programs. This is because, for large merchants, a loyalty program in and of itself can no longer be considered a competitive advantage—a loyalty program...
Forecasting the Future of Digital Wallets
The question of digital wallet acceptance is a tired one – but for many merchants a decision they might want to reconsider. Stored credentials, defined as a system or service that stores multiple payment methods for use across multiple websites, is not a new concept. In fact, many would say...
Biometric Authentication: Evolving from Knowing Your Password to Being Your Password
For over 50 years, passwords have served as access controls for technology. Paradoxically, as the technology that we use in our everyday lives has rapidly evolved to meet our every need, passwords and security have largely remained unchanged since their inception. Today, the average American has more than 130 online...
Is Your App Best for the Job?
Customers install your app hoping to complete a task to achieve a desired outcome. Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen describes this as a Job to be Done in his book, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice.1 He defines the Job to be Done as the “progress...
The Cashless Trend
Several organizations are making changes to go cashless or at least pilot the concept, including Massachusetts’ MBTA, American and United terminals in select airports (Miami being the latest) and Shake Shack’s recently opened cashless location in New York, to name a few. Living in the Seattle area, I have access...
The Loyalty Sweet Spot
What’s the sweet spot of a loyalty program? If you asked a consumer, you may get a far different answer than if you asked a business. The consumer wants: free items (that they would typically buy anyway) rewarding their current behaviors and shopping frequency at the places where they shop...
How will Blockchain Influence the U.S. Payment Systems?
If time is money, then why do our payments move so slow? In the 21st century, speed is the name of the game – instant communication via email, text and phone calls are critical to our day-to-day lives, social media has changed way we learn about the latest news and...
Changing Signature Requirements – How Will You Be Impacted?
Starting last year, the 4 major US card brands – MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and Discover – issued announcements that beginning in April 2018, merchants are no longer be required to collect signatures on card present transactions. Each card brand's program has different rules and requirements about which transactions are exempt...
The Annual Expedition – A Look at NRF's Big Show
The following story is reposted from Convenience Store Decisions and is written by W. Capra Executive Consultant, Ed Collupy. Innovation in 2018 will be about retailer & solution provider collaboration, thinking about not only the new, but extending what’s in place today. It’s a journey that more convenience/petro retailers and...
A Better Path to Inventorying
The following was re-posted from Convenience Store Decisions and features commentary from Ed Collupy. The original posting can be found here. Gaining control over store inventory is a necessary step to boosting your bottom line. When store operators talk about inventory and cash management I always hear them talk about...