Aberdeen (News - Alert), a provider of fact-based research and market intelligence, has announced the results of a survey it carried upon 180 companies to outline the implications and trends related to proximity mobile payments.

 

The survey concludes that retail, hospitality, and transit companies are indicating high levels of awareness for mobile payments and NFC acceptance.

 

In the survey, Aberdeen found that 80 percent of companies surveyed are aware of mobile payments technology today compared to 63 percent in 2007.

 

Also, 52 percent of companies are exploring the use of mobile payment solutions for improving payment seamlessness, customer differentiation, and loyalty within the next 24 months, says Aberdeen.

 

Customer convenience was the key business pressure driving 64 percent of Best-in-Class retailers towards advanced POS payments such as contactless payments in 2007.

 

Further, it was found out that this year, the top business pressure driving 40 percent of Best-in-Class retailers towards advanced POS payments such as contactless payments is the need for improved customer retention and loyalty.

 

This year, customer convenience is the next predominant pressure for 35 percent of Best-in-Class retailers, while in the year 2007 it was the key business pressure driving 64 percent of Best-in-Class retailers towards advanced POS payments.

 

According to Aberdeen's survey, the mobile payments technology landscape is in the early stages of the development lifecycle, and advances have been made in the areas of mobile wallet and NFC applications for remote and proximity payments, hardware components that are integrated at the point-of-sale, and the mobile payment services elements related payment gateway and data services in the last two years.

 

Still, this landscape will continue to reform and develop further in terms of user interface (UI), and integrated standards for configurability and extensibility, both for payments and marketing functions, says the survey.

 

Sahir Anand, senior analyst and chief author of the multi-channel benchmark report by Aberdeen, said that it is evident from the survey that the number of companies that are aware of and executing the initial steps involving mobile payments and NFC acceptance has doubled in 2008 compared to 2007 due to mobile payments ecosystem development as well as the changing economic climate.

 

Anand noted that the building blocks for any retail strategy in the mobile commerce sphere have to take into consideration the return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent on upgrading the payment acceptance environment at the POS.