Robert Hasson, managing director, digital commerce, at Accenture Mobility, argues that banks, retailers and telcos must work together to give customers what they want, when they want it.

We’ve been talking about mobile payments for years, using apps, NFC or other technologies. However, while heavy investment into online channels has resulted in a rapid growth in payments made online, uptake of mobile payments at the physical point of sale has proved slow, and it’s now time to reassess our approach.

Mobile payments themselves are not the end-game – plastic cards are trusted, popular and ubiquitous, so you could argue that there’s no real problem to solve. Instead, mobile payments are really part of a wider digital commerce ecosystem in which data plays the central role.

Digital commerce
To really gain traction in digital commerce, we need to look at the synergies that can be gained when retailers, telcos, banks and other stakeholders come together to form an ecosystem that can truly benefit the consumer.

Working together, this collection of stakeholders can help encourage adoption, loyalty and increased enterprise profitability for all partners. The focus must be on how to give customers what they actually want: a personalised, seamless, relevant experience that can only be driven by real-time data, which is best gathered through mobile devices. For digital commerce – and therefore mobile payments – to be successful, data needs to be aggregated, analysed and acted on in order to provide a valuable service to consumers.

Retailers don’t specialise in such technology; they specialise in selling. But as the two streams converge, it is becoming more important that they understand the benefits of knowing where their customers are, what their customers want, and when and how they want it delivered.

While some have embraced online channels, mobile – a vital source of this data – still seems a bit of a mystery to many, as they are yet to fully realise the benefits of real-time, context-based interaction. If you try suggesting to some retailers a 10-minute promotion targeted at six people in-store, many will tell you they lack the expertise to even know such a thing is possible.

Core technology
Providing the core technology to support promotions like this is obviously important if real-time digital commerce is going to achieve mainstream adoption. Financial institutions, retailers, mobile network operators and technology providers also need to educate consumers on the benefits the technology offers them directly, assuage their privacy and security concerns, and ensure applications work across multiple mobile platforms and networks for ease of use.

Persuading consumers to become regular users of digital commerce apps and mobile payments systems is the next critical step. Accenture recently conducted a payments study in North America, which found that merely making the technology available to consumers is not enough. To attract more frequent and valuable customers and obtain valuable information about their location and purchase history, consumers must be incentivised through rewards or other value-added tools to encourage wider adoption. One example of an additional service that three out of five respondents said they would like see is a receipt-tracking capability on their phone, along with improved financial management tools to help them keep track of payments.

It’s this requirement for added value that necessitates a full digital commerce ecosystem. Banks, telcos, retailers and other service providers can help each other to benefit from the masses of data that interacting with customers through their mobile devices will create. It is increasingly useless for a retailer to only have access to data gathered from within the four walls of their physical store, but through a series of partnerships, they could reach out to customers who have never even shopped with them before.

Let’s take an example: I have banked with NoName Bank for four years. They know my incomings and my outgoings, they know how much disposable income I have, and I trust them to offer me only products and services that I can afford. NoName Bank has just started a ‘recommender’ service, an app that I can use to shop for the best deals on – in this case – hi-fi systems. These will be sold by members of NoName’s digital commerce ecosystem, but given the data held by the bank, they will suit my salary, fit my purchase history, or match what my friends have recently bought and shared on social networks.

A week later, while I’m still making up my mind, a retail partner of NoName Bank’s, BigName Store, has a sale on hi-fi systems, and has asked the bank to use analytics to ascertain which of its customers, like me, might fit the target market for this deal, in order that they can be sent this information.

Personal data
Personal data never has to be shared between partners, only used by those with the permission to do so in order to provide added value to the consumer. If my telco provider is also part of the ecosystem, they can push time-sensitive coupons from BigName Store to my mobile device as soon as I get within 300 metres of my local branch, and the chances are I’ll pop in to check out this hi-fi system.

When I do, assuming I’ve given permission for that data to be shared, BigName Store can be alerted to my entering the store through location-based technology, and even receive my Facebook profile photo so that they can recognise me, welcome me, and take me straight to the stereo. Now I’ve seen it and played with it, I’m ready to purchase, possibly online through NoName Bank’s platform, or perhaps in-store via my mobile, which is linked to my NoName Bank account as well as my loyalty card for BigName Store. Underpinned by a secure, scalable technology platform, the ecosystem has facilitated a seamless, multi-channel experience that has helped me make a decision, by providing the right information to the right place, at the right time.

For each member of the ecosystem, the data that’s available through others will be vital in being better able to target customers using additional, timely context. For every irrelevant, unwanted or outdated message pushed to a consumer, they will become less likely to open the next one. But if an email, a text or an app offers the customer something they actually want – or could be tempted to want – a real, long-term relationship can begin.

There is an opportunity here for all ecosystem members to increase trust, loyalty and customer stickiness by offering added value directly to them in a relevant way. However, in order to see the best returns available from data gathered across each customer’s online and offline journeys, businesses must take the initiative. They need to talk to counterparts in parallel industries to establish a formal ecosystem that – collectively – can offer their customers the best possible experience when consuming their services.

Robert Hasson is managing director, digital commerce, at Accenture Mobility