Johannesburg - Mobile payments and loyalty rewards platform Zapper launched tap-on-phone payments.
Customers can pay using their card and the merchant’s phone, with no need to actually have the Zapper app.
Zapper was one of the first major players in the mobile payment market, using QR codes, alongside names like SnapScan.
These services have enabled customers to pay using only their mobile device and also gave merchants a way around traditional point-of-sale systems or card machines.
While this opened up a range of new transaction opportunities, these payment services required the customer to have the right app and have an account with banking details set up.
Running a business involving small customer transactions almost inevitably requires being able to take card payments, so merchants would need traditional point of sale systems alongside any mobile payment solutions.
This is especially true as cards take over from cash as the standard way to transact.
One can see this trend in the growth of small payment processing device providers such as Yoco and iKhokha. This change allows merchants to use Zapper as their one stop for payments – no need for any device other than their smartphone.
This feature will also allow customers to input their pin when required, as per normal. Safety concerns and customer apprehension about entering their PIN on someone’s phone has been a factor against this kind of technology in the past.
Zapper said the tap-on-phone solution “meets the stringent requirements of physical point-of-sale devices, and consumers will benefit by not needing to hand over their cards to the merchant”.
This feature takes advantage of NFC technology becoming standard on smartphones, which also allows you to use your phone (and SmartWatch) for tap payments.
After small payment processing devices have become ubiquitous among small and medium scale vendors, perhaps Zapper will begin the process of cutting out the middleman entirely, and take us a step towards a future without bank cards or cash – only phones tapping phones.
IOL Tech