A growing number of brands are offering RFID-based stickers and skins for cell phones so customers can pay for goods at the wave of their handset.
Dairy Queen uses such stickers to enable customers to redeem coupons, while Sheetz sandwiches uses a solution called a GO-Tag, that's linked to a pre-paid account.
But is this really a mobile solution, or just contactless payment? What really is the value add?
And why couldn't such stickers, and new wraps like those from Mobile Payment Skins, be applied to just about anything - your wallet, your car keys or even your forehead?
The Sheetz solution, at least, appears to be able to be applied to many different items, which can be used wherever Visa payWave is accepted. And for locations that don't accept contactless payments, the GO-Tag system appears to include a separate magnetic-strip Visa prepaid card.
While this model sounds good, but I hope we're not really looking at a situation where there's a different sticker for every individual retailer.
One case in point: In Southern California, a test of FastTrak badges (the badges placed on cars to pay for toll roads) found that people ordered more food at drive throughs when people could pay by FastTrak. Best of all, any retailer could enable transactions through this badge, which millions of californians use every day.
Key fobs is another model that seems to work well. Yes, the phone is convenient - we almost always have them with us. But the one thing we never leave home without, obviously, is our car/house keys, though many will argue for the mobile phone's pre-iminence. More importantly, whatever the delivery model, it should standardized and work for all retailers, not just individual stores, if we really want it to stick.
Read more, here.
And to learn more about the Burger King study, as well as many other forms of mobile commerce, pick up a copy of BRANDING UNBOUND the book today.
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Rick Mathieson.com
I leave home all the time without my keys. I use the wife's, a friend drives, I ... WALK!
Always have the mobile though.
Posted by: Steven Hoober | July 06, 2009 at 02:20 PM