With all the services offered to consumers to enhance the shopping experience by using their mobile devices (multiple credit and debit cards, loyalty key fobs, access to reward points and gift card balances, electronic
receipts, alerts to valuable promotions), one has to wonder why mobile processing has not been implemented worldwide to meet consumer demand.

Standards will be necessary to give consumers the convenience of mobile transactions. ARTS first investigated this potential eight years ago, but like the forecasted replacement of bar codes with RFID, the implementation has been slower than expected. Published reasons include lack of customer incentives to learn new processes, cost to retailers to upgrade POS devices, potential additional transaction charges from bank cards and mobile operators and bringing all the parties together in a true cooperative partnership.

Many organizations have begun working to standardize various components of mobile transaction, some developing technical standards like new SIM chips for phones, others on near field communication (NFC) connectivity and the business processes. A review of their websites indicates a very limited involvement by retailers.

Mobile phones at POS
Recent developments, however, indicate the use of mobile phones as a comprehensive retail device might be close at hand. This makes sense, since more than three billion people have mobile phones.

On the EuroShop exhibit floor, I reviewed demonstrations of secure payments from mobile phones at point of sale from three vendors using contactless connection from the phone to the sales terminal. Both Juniper and Gartner have recently forecast exponential growth in mobile couponing and payments by 2011, and Amazon.com has recently introduced an order and pay by text messaging service.

Of course, both PayPal and Google have similar special payment methods, and any mobile device with access to the Internet can select and purchase items.

Current efforts promoting the use of mobile devices in retail are focused entirely on payments and not the complete set of retail transactions that consumers will demand of retailers for maximum service and convenience: placing orders, making payments, posting and redeeming loyalty points, capturing and redeeming coupons, purchase/redemption of gift cards, receipts, special offers and rebates.

Offering this broad range of services cannot be accomplished without the involvement and leadership of retailers who are the primary outlets for consumer services.

There will be many ways to implement all of these retail transactions. If retailers, mobile operators, banks and involved third parties use different data definitions and formats, consumers will be frustrated by the lack of consistency. Imagine if your phone worked differently (or not at all) in some countries.

Similar standard data formats
The key to success will lie in achieving a consistent and consumer-friendly method to exchange information between the consumer’s mobile device and the retailer’s technology. What is needed are similar standard data formats for all the above-mentioned transactions. A digital receipt provided to the consumer by either Macy’s or Saks should be readable by the customer’s receipt file; coupons from either P&G or Target should be useable with the payment transaction. Database storage must be the same so a customer can search a registry in any participating retail store.

ARTS is the expert in retail data. We believe we can help make mobile processing available sooner by applying consistency to the various transactions that will make it more attractive to both retailers and consumers. ARTS will launch a mobile transaction project in our technical meetings this month.

We are researching what has been accomplished and intend to offer our expertise to all those currently involved in mobile transaction projects. If you have an opinion on this topic, I would like very much to hear from you. E-mail me at maderr@nrf.com.