EMV and Mobile Wallet Trends for Black Friday

A good article around the movement of payments to EMV and mobile in just the past year,

Black Friday shows EMV, mobile wallet trends

• Jaime Toplin
• Nov. 29, 2017, 11:22 AM

In-store retail remains at the forefront of the shopping experience. Despite $5 billion in e-commerce spend on Black Friday, 16 million shoppers still hit the stores, making over 1 million transactions, mostly using credit cards, according to data from Cayan.

This reflects the overall US environment, and should serve as a reminder that, for payments providers, the in-store experience is just as important as e-commerce.

Cayan identified two key payment trends from this year’s Black Friday.

• EMV has hit the mainstream. Following 2015’s liability shift, the uptake of EMV was slow going. But two years out, it’s becoming standard — 73% of credit card transactions made on Black Friday were chip-on-chip, up from just 55% last year, according to Cayan. That’s likely due to a proliferation of consumer cards — Visa, the largest US card network, increased its number of chip cards in circulation by 59%from March 2016 to March 2017 — that encouraged hesitant merchants to upgrade their terminals and reap EMV benefits. And it’s good news for in-store providers, because it signals an ongoing decline in in-store card fraud thanks to the safety that chip cards provide.
• But mobile payments have not. Despite launching at the same time or earlier than EMV, depending on the provider, customers are still largely refusing to pay contactlessly via phone. Mobile payments made up just 1% of in-store purchases on Black Friday, according to Cayan. That’s 67% growth from last year, so usage is marginally improving, but it’s still insubstantial enough for these products to make any kind of massive impact on consumer payment habits.

And those trends should provide important insights for payment providers. As the in-store point-of-sale (POS) market becomes increasingly competitive, firms are increasing their focus on full-suite, value-added experiences as a means of differentiating themselves from their peers. But payments are still at the center of the experience, and consumer trends matter.

The mainstreaming of EMV indicates that it’s no longer a luxury or an add-on, and should be included in a standard POS terminal, or else providers are at risk of losing potential clients. And mobile payments could be seen as an opportunity for these vendors, which could work with wallet providers to help build out incentive programs to better engage users in an attempt to avoid losing out to plastic entirely.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has put together a detailed report on point-of-sale terminals that:

• Explains the current state of in-store retail and why terminal firms need to evolve to meet it.
• Groups features that matter to merchants and explains why they’re important and what terminal providers stand to gain from focusing on them.
• Determines the leading players in the space.
• Assesses how the leading players stack up, and which offerings are the most comprehensive.
• Issues recommendations about how to develop an attractive platform that best serves merchants' needs as the market continues to shift.