Finally, mobile payment systems are coming to near field communications! And that means one thing: big changes for your small business, in the long term and the short term. If you’re a retailer, you’re going to have a lot more options.
You may be able to reduce some–possibly even all of your staff using near field communications to accept payments at your store, or more remote locations. If you’ve set up shop near the beach or at a farmer’s market or other open air locations, then you’ll have a much easier way to work. In some applications down the line, you may even be able to cut your shrinkage issues by having a near field communications system near the door that automatically bills a smartphone for whatever walks out of the store.
But at the same time, you’re going to have some issues. If you reduce your staff in favor of near field communications systems, you’re likely going to find yourself coming up against some backlash in the community. And while you’ll reduce your employee expenses, you’ll probably lose business on top of it as your customers protest the loss of jobs in a terrible economy. Reducing shrinkage is always good, but you may have legal issues on top of that with the whole “automatically charging a cell phone” thing. And of course, there’s the ever-present initial investment hanging over the whole concept like a retail Sword of Damocles, with no one having anything vaguely resembling a clue how much it will all cost.
The end result that figuring out whether or not mobile payments as part of a near field communications system is right for your business is going to be a largely personal matter, depending on the needs of your individual venture. Those without a lot of personal customer contact aren’t going to need this quite so much, but if your small business focuses on retail, it’s definitely something you’ll want to look into.
Related keywords: mobile payments, near field communications, smartphone, shrinkage