Liz Gulsvig is the Copywriter at Forte Payment Systems. Liz currently writes their blog, where you can find all kinds of glorious nuggets pertaining to the electronic payments industry and small business. You can also find her on Google+ and LinkedIn. Email her at liz.gulsvig@forte.net or find her on Twitter: @LizGulsvigForte.
A smart mobile wallet is going to launch features that either directly work with or simply remind us of social media, whether it is to get with the times or help boost company cultures and profits. Let’s take a look at how the line blurs between payments and social media for smart community building and an insightful opportunity.
Quite a few applications already encourage the intermingling of social media and mobile wallets.
Facebook Gifts allows users purchase gift cards and give them directly to their friends. Apps based on friends paying friends, like Venmo, allow parties to link accounts and cards for quick and easy throwing down on pizza, cabs and more. Chirpify uses social media platforms like Twitter to move money through PayPal with a simple “buy” command. Donation and crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and GoFundMe support instant giving and link up easily with social media to help share stories and build inspiration from causes right from the chatter.
Apps like these are clearly linked to digital socialization or social media, wasting no time getting the two friendly together. In fact, Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail remarked in an article on Forbes, “Over the next decade our goals are to be accepted like Visa and used like Facebook.” Can’t get more united than that.
Other retail store specific apps are working similarly to mobile wallets and integrating with social media.
Target launched a new mobile app this year that works as an intelligent, intuitive shopping list. Users can simply add items and coupons to the apps for cashiers to scan at checkout. Target’s app works with a Facebook login to let users post their purchases and coupons directly to their news feeds for immediate sharing.
The Starbucks app lets customers pay through their phones and build up loyalty rewards through a loaded virtual card. Addiction to caramel macchiatos is a fairly common American ailment, after all. The Starbucks app allows users to send eGifts to their contacts, bearing resemblance to Facebook Gifts. Recently, the company also launched a promotion for those who synced their Starbucks accounts to Twitter, allowing them to tweet $5 gift cards to people.
These wallets are all examples of social media gestures that work in the interstice between social media and traditional electronic payment platforms. Engaging customers and building trust are cornerstones of good brand management, and when electronic payments can start to move and feel like social media, the two can work hand in hand to build loyalty and boost profits.
And let’s get a little Orwellian. Recent advancements in facial recognition have been tied to payments operations due to the appeal of heightened security. PayPal recently partnered with Berlin-based Orderbird to implement a POS service in Germany that will “recognise users when they walk into participating businesses,” according to TechCrunch. This comes after Finnish company Uniqul earlier released their unique payment system based on utilizing facial recognition technologies. Square Wallet already uses your profile picture on retail POS systems for cashiers to instantly recognize you. Seeing this, and the obvious link to social media (facial recognition has been used for tagging for awhile now), means things could get a bit weird. The options are limitless. The future of payments, security and social media enters the realm of science fiction: at least for those of us who can remember when things like the Voight-Kampff of Blade Runner and Star Trek teleportation were a seriously big deal.
Mobile wallets are happening because we do (and want to do) everything on a mobile device, including pay. Social media totally ingrained in the way we communicate. The integration of the two is a smart move because no longer just want to buy: we want to show how and what we buy. And we want to talk about it. Digital chatter rules – and payments better get in.
Photo Credit: Flickr user Ryan Loos (rh1n0)
