Nov. 1, 2018

Adobe is forecasting a surge in holiday shopping, with online sales rising 14.8 percent to $124 billion in U.S., this season with a record Cyber Monday in the forecast and increasing use of smartphones to browse and complete purchases.

Smartphones use as the preferred method of shopping has risen to 27.2 percent of revenue, an increase of 11.6 percent year-over-year, and 48.3 percent of visits, according to the report. Conversions rates for mobile shoppers are twice the rate of web shoppers and 22 percent of mobile shoppers have recently made a purchase as compared with web shoppers at 7 percent.

Voice-activated devices are also showing a surge as a shopping tool, as 21 percent plan to use voice-assisted devices to buy frequently used items and 17 percent will use the technology for one-time ordering and in-store pickup, the report indicated.

Adobe data shows that Cyber Monday business will surge 17.6 percent, year-over-year to $7.7 billion in sales and Thanksgiving Day sales are expected to rise 16.5 percent to 3.3 billion. The company said that nearly $1 in every $5 spent this holiday season will be between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.

The most anticipated gifts will include 4K televisions, retro video consoles and titles like Tekken 3, Ridge Racer Type 4 and Final Fantasy VII are expected to be among the most sought-after items.

Adobe Analytics reviewed 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, involving 80 of the top 100 U.S. web retailers.

Topics: Mobile Apps, Mobile Marketing, Online Purchasing, Retail

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Nov. 1, 2018

Mobile wallet provider Cardfree has launched a pay-at-table service, allowing restaurants to set up mobile payment for their customers without deploying new hardware. The service, according to a company press release, has a wide range of restaurant applications, including catering, delivery, advance orders and mobile wait lists. It's been pre-integrated with 90 percent of restaurant point-of-sale systems and allows customers to view and pay for their checks while sitting at the table, CEO Jon Squire said in the announcement.

"There is a gap in the market for an easy, national, pay at table solution," he said.  "Current solutions tend to be regional, require an investment in new hardware and have lengthy deployment times for POS integrations.”

Restaurants of any size can use the service as well as channel partners that want to integrate it into their API or offer it as white label service, according to the company. The service can also be integrated into mobile wallet, loyalty and other services.

The announcement comes just months after Cardfree entered into an agreement with Dunkin Brands for mobile ordering. 

Topics: Mobile Apps, Mobile/Digital Wallet, Restaurants, Technology Providers

Companies: CARDFREE

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COMMENTARY

Nov. 1, 2018 | by David Jones

It's been said that you can't reinvent yourself, but the changes we've seen in the journalism field, and the changes we've seen in the economy, have forced many of us to relearn quite a few things. I've been a working journalist for three decades covering everything from business travel to real estate and in recent years have moved into the technology space, where I've closely watched an industry that has seen more than its share of disruption. The opportunity to serve as the new editor of Mobile Payments Today in many ways fits right in with my experiences over the course of many years of success, disruption, relearning and reinvention.

If you follow the growth of omnichannel commerce, you realize that some of the biggest success stories came from filling the void left by an unmet need. There have always been consumers on the outside that were standing outside a virtual window with a desire to be on the inside, but for whatever reason, the dominant industries were falling a little short.

In the 1970s, while growing up in Queens, New York, supermarkets like Waldbaum's, King Kullen and Key Food literally stood within blocks of our apartment building and department stores like Gertz, Alexander's and Korvettes anchored the retail corridors of our community.  

By the 1980s, urban department stores had shut down and relocated to suburban malls and supermarkets began to disappear from local neighborhoods, and major holiday shopping required a trek to Rego Park or midtown Manhattan, as public transit was the preferred mode travel. Car ownership was considered an added expense.

The industries that emerged out of this were beginning to find an audience because the need was great and the options were few. For anyone who lived or worked in New York, places like FreshDirect opened up lifelines for people, who needed access to healthy, high-quality, fresh meat and produce that exceeded what was available at most urban supermarkets.  

What drove much of the demand for omnichannel commerce is the need to get the product and make the experience as frictionless as possible. Over the past decade, consumers found a need for a flexible working environment and direct access to credit and liquidity.

The ability to marry the computer, the tablet — and more recently — the smartphone to retailers, jobs and lenders allowed consumers to make the most informed decisions about what they buy, how they work and who has control over their money.

In many ways, this is the most exciting time in my generation because the brightest minds in the world are opening up the playbook and asking what they can bring to the table. Hopefully, they include even more new ways to shop, bank, hail a car or get enough credit to launch a business.

And, hopefully, a business can find a way to reinvent itself so that a small, dedicated team of craftsman can compete against a billion-dollar behemoth. I hope to help you, the reader, to make sense of an industry that is growing and changing faster than the speed of sound.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any story ideas or comments or questions about the industry. 

Cover photo: iStock

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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Oct. 31, 2018

Albertsons, one of the largest grocery chains in the U.S.,  entered an agreement with Takeoff Technologies to test an AI-based microfulfillment technology that will help drive new efficiencies in the grocery chain's growing online shopping business.

Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons will test Takeoff's "hyper-local" fulfillment technology at an existing store, a company spokeswoman told Mobile Payments Today. Customers will be able to order groceries through the existing Albertsons interface and have their orders processed through the automated Takeoff system, which uses a series of totes and conveyors to move the items to a store employee, who then prepares the groceries for the customer, she said.

Takeoff eGrocery technology uses robotics to help fulfill customer orders and works with automated warehouse technology from a company called Knapp. Earlier this month, Takeoff announced the nation's first robotic grocery fulfillment operation at 14 Sedano's Supermarket locations in Miami. That company is one of the largest Hispanic grocery chains in the U.S.

In that announcement, the companies said eGrocery technology assembled an order of 60 items within just a few minutes using robots. Takeoff officials said the company was working with five regional and national grocery chains with plans to deploy in 2019.

Albertsons offers customers a variety of ways to order groceries online, including mobile phones, computers and other devices. The company's E-commerce business is up 113 percent above a year ago, according to the spokeswoman, who added that the technology being used with Takeoff can drive efficiencies at more than 10 times the rate of existing methods.

Topics: In-App Payments, Mobile Apps, Mobile Payments, Retail, Technology Providers

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