What's Value of Mobile Payments for Retailers?

For mobile payments and wallets to get wide retailer support, the value proposition has to be quite clear, since it is merchants, almost alone among ecosystem participants, for whom mobile payments means spending money (upgrading point of sale systems and software), not getting it (consumers might get rewards, processing networks and issuing banks protect transaction fee revenue).

Access to consumers' shopping habits is probably the biggest long term value, though some might expect lower transaction costs that will offset the costs of upgrading point of sale systems to accept mobile payments, in some cases.

"Who's buying, what the market segments are, where they are, what kind of things they're buying and how the information that's captured at the point of sale can be leveraged for things like offers, loyalty, rewards, and that kind of thing" is the value, according to Bill Maurer, who runs the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at U.C. Irvine, according to.Money Morning.

That would allow creating the sort of recommendation engines that Amazon and Netflix use to create context and shopping suggestions.