Community

We see the relatively high cost of on-premise "social IT" solutions as a major entry barrier. On the other hand, enterprises have security-related concerns for adopting more cost-effective cloud-based alternatives. We see far better adoption when vendors of such solutions package them around high-ROI use cases viz. build blockbuster products with greater collaboration with the extended ecosystem, create winning marketing campaigns by tapping into the extended ecosystem to elicit more success stories of actual usage by other customers, etc. 

The runaway success of Square has proved that the biggest hurdle faced by merchants in cards acceptance is getting a merchant account. ISOs and acquiring banks are - ahem - 'squarely' to blame for creating so much friction in this process. 

Great post! Goes to show how the move between cash and cashless is not guaranteed to go only in one direction - as long as creaking infrastructure plays truant.

Also reminds me of a LinkedIn thread in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene in the US in which opposing camps were discussing the merits and demerits of an iPhone v. Android app for keeping people updated about progress made on relief measures surrounding natural calamities. I'd just heard from my sister living in Virginia that her mobile phone battery was about to die in a few minutes since power supply to their area was cut off 3 days earlier. Having just come out of that prematurely-aborted telecon where I also learned that her power supply wasn't likely to resume for another 7 days, I couldn't help throwing water on the LinkedIn thread by proposing trumpet-and-drum toting people as the only viable method of alerting people under such circumstances!

With the situation being what it is, I'm willing to ignore

-  Recognize Me: Make Me Feel Valued

-  Make an Emotional Connection: Be Genuine

-  Change Perceptions: Treat me as a person, not a number

as long as their people are trained and empowered to resolve tickets on the first try thru' any channel.

Kudos for a balanced article. A few comments:

"... NFC ... where shoppers can just swipe their phones ... replacing the need for wallets and cards when shopping." Paying by mobile phone is more than just swiping the phone and requires several additional steps such as finding mobile network coverage; running the m-wallet app; and selecting the card with which to pay. Besides, most mobile payments today use the mobile phone merely as an additional form factor. The underlying credit/debit card continues to be used to fund the transaction, so NFC only replaces the need for carrying the physical card but not for the card, and the underlying, bank account. This is an important distinction in the context of so much misleading information floating around about how mobile payments will disintermediate banks from the payment loop and prove to be the panacea for the unbanked. 

"Cards are the option which a vast majority would use, which leaves room for maybe one additional method which we would adopt as an alternative." Agreed. Cash and PayPal already seem to fit the bill as the one additional method. Remember PayByTouch? It was arguably easier and more convenient than cards but still couldn't achieve critical mass and had to file for bankruptcy. Prospects for others don't seem bright, particularly if they continue to be designed and marketed as alternative payment methods. 

"Those who today try to predict how we will be paying for our shopping in two years time are not being reasonable." Not really. In two years, isn't it reasonable to expect that cards and cash will continue to dominate payments for shopping? 

@Ian B:

Not sure about UK, but with the PayAtPump (PAP) technologies that we're familiar with in USA, Canada, Australia and India, no dab hands at syphoning fuel back are required!

The motorist first inserts the card into the card reader located at the gas station's forecourt and enters the amount of fuel required. The PAP system gets a pre-authorization from the card-issuer bank and only then unlocks the dispenser to dispense fuel. Any difference between the actual and expected amounts are processed through another transaction. However, in each and every case, we've seen gas stations allowing motorists to walk into the store located inside the gas station and alternatively pay cash to the human attendant sitting by the till.  

Having personally used both channels for complaints, I see a few major differences between Twitter and the service provider's (e.g. bank) dedicated channels (e.g. call center, website): 

1. Twitter complaints can be unstructured - even frustrations and exasperations can get onboard Twitter before they are formed fully enough to fit into service provider's structured complaint channels.
2. Complaints on Twitter can get magnified via retweets by followers in the public domain, whereas service provider's complaint channels are one-on-one. To that extent, the former channel poses reputation risk whereas the latter is only subject to internal management. 
3. I'm not sure if it's technically impossible, but I've never received autoresponders in response to my complaints over Twitter - either I get a quick response or don't hear back at all. 

When it comes to how banks and other service providers should treat Twitter complaints - respond or stonewall - something tells me that they'll use the same ROI approach to planning any investments in this space as they do for all their other investments!

Only mass transits, tollways and other quasi-monopolies can afford to say "I'm sorry sir, we don't accept cash". For one, as long cash is legal tender, I'd imagine that it's simply illegal to refuse cash. More importantly, for every merchant who declines cash, there's another who accepts it, so customers could equally well say "I'm sorry sir / madam, we won't buy from you". Point is, cashless methods of payments will find mass adoption only if they provide consumers with greater convenience and / or security than cash, not because they're archaic or cheaper to process by banks / merchants.

While on this subject, let me cite the example of Flipkart which has shown that cash can equally well be on the way in even in today's world for unexpected usage scenarios.  

Online book sellers have been around in India for over 10 years. But, it's the new kid on the block Flipkart that has taken book etailing to never-before heights. Its runaway success is widely attributed by analysts and market observers to a new payment method it popularized (though didn't invent): Cash on Delivery, where the customer pays by cash to the courier who delivers the consignment and doesn't need to use ePayments.

Similar examples like Kwedit in USA suggest that cash isn't going away anytime soon. 

Somewhere along its hype cycle, we've seen mobile payments getting linked to the unbanked. If the situation in India - home to at least one of the 3-4 unbanked billions in the world - is any indication, this link simply doesn't exist. According to current regulations in India, mobile payments can only work off of bank-issued credit / debit cards, and are, therefore, not available to the unbanked who have no bank accounts. While things may change in future, this is the current situation in the mainstream. 

Banks who've missed the mobile payments bus / boat should probably count themselves the smart ones, going by this recent American Banker article titled "Mobile Payments Very Unimportant to Consumers' according to which:

1. Banks and their partners could be wasting money developing mobile wallets...
2. ... the convenience of traditional credit or debit cards is hard to beat.
3. It's not easier, faster, better, more helpful to pay with your phone than to take your wallet out.

Ah, what relief to know that I belong to the majority! Zong, Boku and other MNO-billing based mobile payments are truly disruptive but they're far from mainstream. The myriad m-wallets hogging the limelight use the same bank-issued cards and I honestly fail to see how adopting them is so different from chucking one leather wallet and moving my cards to another leather wallet.