Dec. 14, 2018

Starbucks opened its first-ever virtual Starbucks store Thursday in China as part of the coffee chain's previously announced partnership with e-commerce retailer Alibaba, according to a company release.

Starbucks said the virtual store will allow customers to have a one-touch Starbucks experience, using the Starbucks mobile app and Alibaba's customer-facing mobile apps, including Taobao, Tmall and Alipay.

The virtual store was developed through an online management hub in order to integrate Starbucks Delivers, Say it with Starbucks social gifting and the Starbucks Tmall flagship store.

Customers can buy digital beverage gift cards as well as physical Starbucks gifts, including merchandise from the Starbucks Tmall flagship store. They can also get a handcrafted Starbucks beverage within a half hour through Alibaba's Ele.me delivery service.

Starbucks and Alibaba originally launched the strategic partnership in August.

Customers may earn Starbucks Rewards points. Starbucks and Alibaba have a combined 670 million mobile active users.

Topics: Loyalty Programs, Mobile Payments, Region: APAC, Restaurants, Retail

Companies: Alibaba, Alipay, Starbucks

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Dec. 13, 2018 | by David Jones

As mobile wallet and contactless payment demand surges in parts of Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, questions remain about why the U.S. market trails other countries in adoption rates.

New research from the National Retail Federation and others is demonstrating that consumer and retail adoption of mobile payment technologies has been sluggish in the U.S., as consumers have balked at switching over to new contactless payment platforms. 

"Our study found that consumer demand for mobile payment just hadn't materialized for most merchants and only about half had adopted the technology to accept mobile payment," said J. Craig Shearman, vice president for global affairs and public relations at the National Retail Federation, in an email interview with Mobile Payments Today.  

He said the study showed 55 percent of merchants were set up for Samsung Pay, with 43 percent set up for Apple Pay and 20 percent with Google Pay.

The biennial report by the NRF and Forrester Research revealed retailers have tempered their enthusiasm about mobile payments implementation. According to the report, 35 percent of retailers said implementing new and emerging digital and mobile payment types was their top overall payment initiative over the next 18 months, which less than half the response from a similar survey in 2016.  

The study showed consumer demand for these initiatives hasn’t materialized the way it was expected.

According to the report, PayPal leads with the most implementations online as well as the most retailers planning to implement in 2018 and 2019. Apple Pay is also among the leaders in the study.

Payment leaders, according to the study, have shifted their focus largely to improve the retail customer experience, with emphasis on supporting the buy online, pick up in store movement.

Sluggish sales

The demand concerns coincide with what some experts have previously warned regarding an industrywide slowdown in mobile device adoption, particularly in the high-end category. The slowdown issue reached critical mass in recent months when Apple stopped reporting its iPhone sales in quarterly earnings reports, a move related to that company's shift toward services revenue.

Despite that internal strategy shift, many investors grew alarmed by the move as the iPhone has been the core product for Apple revenue growth over the past decade.

While industry analysts said the mobile device slowdown is real, Rivka Gerwitz Little, research director, worldwide payment strategies at IDC, cautioned the trend does not correlate to the slow adoption of mobile payment use in the U.S.

"I don't think the slowdown in device sales will impact mobile payments," she told Mobile Payments Today in an email interview. "The fact that we had 90 percent plus smartphone penetration in the U.S., and had relatively tepid mobile wallet adoption, tells me there's little correlation between mobile device sales and mobile payments use."

She argued in-store contactless is "not enough of a value add" for consumers or merchants and expects to see a rise of universal wallet with in-store/online payment, one-click payment options as it is fleshed out with remittance and peer-to-peer lending capabilities.

Cover photo: iStock

Topics: Contactless / NFC, Mobile Apps, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Mobile Payments, POS, Retail, Trends / Statistics

David Jones

David Jones is a veteran business and technology journalist, with three decades of experience writing about business travel, real estate and technology.

Since 2015 he covered a range of technology stories for the ECT News Network, which includes the E-Commerce Times, TechNewsWorld, LinuxInsider and CRM Buyer, writing about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, machine learning, open source computing and privacy issues among others,. He recently covered FinTech issues for PYMNTS.com.

He worked as a staff writer for Bloomberg Business News and an online reporter for Crain’s New York Business. He has written for numerous media organizations, including Reuters, The New York Times, The Real Deal, Continental, City Limits and The Nation.

He was previously awarded the George Washington Williams Fellowship for Journalists of Color by the Independent Press Association.

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Dec. 13, 2018

Western Union has announced an alliance with TerraPay, which will allow remittances to go directly into mobile wallets and bank accounts in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, according to a news release.

TerraPay operates a low-value payments network that lets customers send and receive payments across various domestic, regional and international markets. Western Union offers funds transfer services across 200 countries and westernunion.com is available in 50 countries.

"Uniting our strengths will play a pivotal role in expanding TerraPay's network into new markets and help migrant workers send money home to a mobile wallet or bank account, through a reliable and convenient service," said Ambar Sur, founder and CEO of Terra Pay, in the release.

Topics: Mobile Payments, Money Transfer / P2P

Companies: Western Union

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