The basics of mobile payments

Payment is getting more convenient and fast. Contactless payment will not only be available through your card, but through your mobile later this year.

The popularity of mobile cannot be ignored. Asos’s mobile site in December last year had £1m worth of sales via the mobile site with UK users alone.

John Lewis and M&S customers are willing to buy big-ticket items on their phones. Both retailers have reported selling items in excess of £3,000 via mobile.

The operators have jumped on the bandwagon. Everything Everywhere are to launch contactless payment service by early summer and O2 is launching its contactless mobile wallet service in the second half of this year- reaching an estimated 60,000 points of sale by the year end.

Retail purchases, airtime top ups and eventually transport and entertainment tickets will be able to be purchased on O2 customers’ mobiles.

A trial by O2’s parent Telefónica in Spain found 90% of participants used their contactless-payment-enabled device for payments and 85% thought it was secure enough to use regularly.

However, in the excitement of innovation, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics of mobile payment. Shoppers seem to be dissatisfied most with payment phases of the mobile journey. According to a mCommerce benchmark study, charting 15 top retailers including M&S, Waitrose and John Lewis, online retail outperformed mCommerce most significantly in the shopping basket phase, alongside the homepage.

Payment provider PayPoint’s managing director Michael Norton says that some retailers are guilty of not having a payment page that renders properly on a mobile.

He added that the recognition of the customer and the population of their details is crucial on mobiles. “People need to come onto mobiles to pay pre-registered with the user just needing to key in the password, ” he said.

Norton said that mobile payment needs to model itself on the concept of the Amazon 1 Click - where you can buy a product with one click without the task of entering all product and delivery details.

In terms of the common debate about a transactional app versus a mobile site, he recommends a mobile site as apps get changed around a lot. “16 to 25 year olds change their apps once a month,” he said.