Cash used to be king. Once, no one went shopping without a wallet or purse stuffed with banknotes. But the way we shop and pay is changing fast. We expect to be able to use our favourite ways to pay. One visitor to the
Retail Business Technology Expo (RBTE) 2015 show at London’s Olympia this week tweeted #nonsense and #disappointed on discovering a ‘cash only’ sign on a till at the event. It was a sign of the times at an event where mobile commerce dominated conversations.
PayPal is an RBTE sponsor, and our director of mobile commerce Rob Harper gave a keynote presentation about how the retail industry is going through a profound transformation. That change is driven by the rise of smartphone shopping – and the rise of digital money.
Rob explained that 2014 was the year contactless and mobile payments really took off in Britain. The
UK Cards Association reports that spending on contactless cards more than tripled to £2.3 billion. Meanwhile, the nation’s love affair with the smartphone spurred spending on the go. PayPal processed $46 billion in mobile payments globally in 2014, and launched app-based pay at table and order ahead services in the UK. Our aim is to solve real problems, making paying as easy and as seamless as possible. A great example of this was the popular PayPal Chill and Charge lounge at RBTE. Visitors could order their drinks and snacks via the
Orderella app and have them delivered to their table while they worked or relaxed.
A perfect example of this is the announcement of
our new service with Shell letting UK customers pay for fuel via their smartphone without having to go into the shop.
For retailers and other businesses, this really matters. We recently published
research from Ipsos showing that almost half of consumers buying something on their mobile have given up their purchase because paying was too painful. If your company isn’t giving customers a great experience, you’re missing out – especially as mobile shopping is growing at nearly four times the rate of overall online spending in the UK.
As RBTE showed, shopping and money is going mobile. But PayPal’s vision is wider than the smartphone. Our aim is to be the world’s leading open payment platform. We want to enable consumers and merchants to come together in the emerging world of digital commerce – letting them use any technology they wish, any payment form that they wish, on top of our platform. As wearable devices such as smartwatches and other connected devices take off, PayPal will be there to help people make the most of them.