Touchless payment war heating up in Singapore

2 years ago I wrote about paying with online tools in a brick-&-mortar store and it felt new and refreshing. In the last few months all the online giants have decided to expand their touch-less payment solutions internationally, venturing outside of their home turf for the first time.
We have Apple Pay and Android Pay leaving the US shores and a few other test countries, and Samsung Pay doing the same starting from South Korea.
It may sound like another online fad but this time (okay you may have heard this before) it is quite more serious: traditional banks are in and promoting the respective services aggressively. What has changed in the last two years?
The ubiquity of smartphones and the realization that once a service reaches critical mass, users tend to stick with it. And this has nothing to do with the quality of the service, or its UX, it is really the number of users and the related network effect that makes difference. And once someone is used to paying with a service, and providing a wealth of information about its habits, this is gold for any provider.
Hence the payment war that was brewing for so long now playing in the open.

Singapore with its small highly connected and wealthy population, and top notch digital infrastructure is the perfect testing ground. Samsung Pay became available on June 16th, Apple Pay started few weeks earlier on May 25th, and finally Android Pay arrived on June 28th. And all the banks are proposing cash back schemes, food store chains are proposing discounts, and every possible media is reporting on it. And of course advertising platforms are loving it with the gigantic budgets being poured into the various launches.
This would not be complete without mentioning Alipay, from the Chinese juggernaut Alibaba, that is now available almost everywhere after the purchase of regional online e-commerce giant lazada. Although Alipay is still firmly online based, this will change quickly.
I have not done a thorough test of all services, using exclusively Android Pay, which works also very well on all terminals labelled "Samsung Pay" (to the confusion of store clerks)*. Using those services is akin to swiping your credit card in front of the terminal and putting it back in your wallet. Quick and easy, with the difference of doing with your phone. And it is always closer to your hand than your credit card, right?

A quick demonstration here

The four actors are using Singapore to learn about consumers' reaction, hone their marketing tactics and expand quickly. It will make for an interesting battle but also for more innovation for us, consumers. And that, cannot be bad.

*I must mention again that I am a Google employee so I have had immediate access to the service and can be biased. And also that the opinion expressed here is mine only and not that of my employer.

Online payment coming to brick and mortar

Paying online is becoming easier by the day with so many options to chose from. I reckon I can use credit cards (directly inputting data in fields), PayPal, prepaid cards, my Apple ID, Google Wallet, Bitcoins and the likes, and even air miles. 
On the other end of the spectrum, brick and mortar stores seem to have been stuck in the 1990s. Cash, cheques, credit cards (not always with microchips and PIN codes) and that is about it. Rechargeable NFC cards (stand alone or embedded in mobile phones) have appeared in the last few years but they are limited by competing standards and acceptance. Even ever-modern Japan, where I am based, is plagued my these limitations and there is no dominant new form of payment ("saifu keitai" or "mobile wallet" has not succeeded the transition from feature phone to smartphone)

Recently the competition has heated up for both payment and loyalty cards with the Apple Passbook/ iBeacon combination, Google Wallet (NFC) and of course Square. The most advanced so far seem to be the latter, with its international footprint, cash register options and charismatic leader. It even started making strides in traditionally conservative Japanese mom & pop shops, as their latest online campaign suggests. Paypal has decided to try its luck as well and announced several moves starting almost a year ago with the most interesting announcement last September. I was delighted to learn they were testing that precise technology at my neighborhood electronic store and went to try it out. I was accompanied by my fellow geek and colleague Joe Fry. As images are better than words, Joe shot and edited this video of our test

Despite the gentlemen manning the booth who was initially really surprised to see two foreigners coming just to try out his ware, it was a seamless experience. It "just" replaces the credit card swapping and signing/ entering a PIN number, but it makes a difference. Nowadays many people have smartphones in their pockets and launching an application is trivial and simple. I would say it felt almost natural to pay this way, without having to look for my wallet and not giving away my credit card information to yet another store. I am pretty sure I would not be the only one feeling that way. Additionally, Paypal is a trusted name and I can see how using it around town would be reassuring. And it handles many currencies so using it for international travel would be a possibility. 
I do not know how it translates in terms of fees and money availability for businesses, but it would certainly simplify the process of accepting non-cash payment compared to getting a merchant account and renting a credit card terminal.

As a marketer I can see the potential for finally calculating and analyzing the effectiveness of a campaign from the marketing message (online or offline) down to the actual purchase at the point of sale. As a skeptic, I see traditional businesses (distributors, store chains, credit card companies, cash register and card terminal manufacturers) putting up a fight to avoid change and technological companies continue creating great incompatible systems based on closed standards. 

But as a geek and a consumer, I am very positive with this new development and excited to see new modes of payments more in sync with our modern habits, challenging the status quo. And with the announced arrival of wearable computing, it will make even more sense to ditch cash for an all-digital transaction. There, I bet you my kid may never actually understand why we were making such a fuss about it!