Nov. 19, 2018

UnionPay International, a subsidiary of China UnionPay,  is launching a mobile payment next year in Sri Lanka, according to a company press release.  UnionPay plans to launch its QR code payment system as part of an agreement with Cargills Group, the largest retail and FMCG group in Sri Lanka. It will be added to the Cargills' e-wallet with plans for a rollout during the first half of next year.

UnionPay is accepted at major tourist cities, including Columbo, Kandy, Galle and Matale, and about 2,000 merchants, including restaurants, department stores and supermarkets support it.

UnionPay's QuickPass service, which allows users to pay with a contactless swipe, is accepted at more than 2 million POS terminals across 30 countries and regions outside of mainland China. The UnionPay QR code payment is accepted at more than 60,000 merchants across 23 nations and regions outside of China.

Topics: Mobile/Digital Wallet, Region: APAC

Companies: UnionPay International, China UnionPay

Related Content

Latest Content

Nov. 16, 2018 | by David Jones

Target is using mobile technology to let customers skip the cashier line

For many retailers, the holiday shopping season can literally mean the difference between growth and expansion or their ultimate demise. The combination of fierce competition on pricing, the need for fast and accurate delivery and maintaining enough inventory to meet consumer demand can expose the most experienced retailer.

The increasing demand for omnichannel shopping options means that retailers need to convert millennial and Generation Z consumers from passive shoppers into paying customers on a mobile platform with a service that can securely handle a large volume of traffic, engage the customer and hopefully draw those same customers into the store to potentially make more purchases.

Smartphones impacted more than one-third of the $1 trillion in holiday sales in 2017, according to a September blog post by Fiona Swerdlow, vice president and research director at Forrester Research. She said in the three months before her post, 73 percent of U.S. smartphone owners had researched physical products on their phones while they were in the store, and 46 percent of EU-5 smartphone owners did the same.  

She argued that retailers need to streamline checkout and payments to drive mobile conversion by ensuring that they have the correct "input masks," [to ensure accurate formatting of user data] parsing form fields and limiting digital wallets to those that customers use.

Point-of-sale integration

Point-of-sale integration continues to be a problem when it comes to integrating the capabilities of merchants with mobile payment systems, according to Maya Mikhailov, co-founder and chief marketing officer at GPShopper. In some cases, this means that POS systems need to be upgraded to accept NFC-based mobile payments such as Android or Apple Pay, she said.

"Even when the POS hardware is updated, some retailers haven't enabled mobile payments from the software end," she told MPT. "But this can also mean opening standards on the devices themselves to allow third parties access to the NFC systems needed to encourage more players,"

She said the retailers most directly impacted by these problems are those in the middle tier, as large retailers have the resources available to make large-scale changes to their computer systems, while companies like Square can assist even one-shop retailers with their requirements.

"The laggards right now are in the middle — too big for Square, but too small to make the capital investment needed for a POS upgrade," she said.

Combining mobile payments with the in-store experience

Target, which operates more than 1,800 physical stores and also has a major online and mobile business, has utilized mobile to help put pressure on Amazon and Walmart. Its aggressively promoting same-day delivery through its Shipt acquisition, for example, and earlier this month launched its "skip the line" technology, allowing customers to use mobile checkout with the help of a Target associate from any part of the store to avoid the in-store cashier lines.

Another way retailers are incorporating the mobile and a brick-and-mortar shopping experience is by allowing customers to purchase big-ticket items via installments from their phones. An October study released by Square found that 45 percent of consumers planned to make a purchase of $250 or more during the holiday season, however, 61 percent said they would feel more comfortable making that purchase if they had the ability to pay for it over time.

In response to this concern, Square has launched a program called Square Installments, which allows merchants working with the platform to provide immediate decisions to mobile shoppers buying items between $250 and $10,000, according to spokesman Enrique Petino-Daly. He said a key differentiator for this program is the seller is not involved in the decision making on whether to provide the extended installment plans.

"Generally, we've heard tremendous feedback on the impact Square installments can have on a seller's growth," he told MPT.

Fly1 Motorsports, an automotive restyling business in Southern California, saw a 20 to 30 percent increase if mobile sales after offering Square Installments. Average order values shot up 55 percent at the firm.

"The bottom line is in 2019, retailers both in online and physical must know their consumer's preferences like the back of their hands," said Joe Leija, head of Ingenico ePayments, North America. "The appropriate payment data will allow merchants to better prepare for future trends of consumers whether that's biometrics, bitcoin or another emerging technology."

Topics: Mobile Apps, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Retail

Companies: Square, Target

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.

Related Content

Latest Content