Europe leads the contactless payments adoption. You can pay contactless across all European Union nowadays. This however still varies greatly per member state. On average, contactless payments makeup half of all payment transactions made at points of sale and continue to grow. In Czechia for instance, the share of contactless payments is reaching more than 90 percent. That all demonstrates European consumers’ enthusiasm to embrace new technologies. People look for speedy and convenient payments they can trust. In addition to ease of use and convenience, people also benefit from the added security and protection.
Mobile Payments
Retail stores accept contactless payments through NFC terminals. NFC, or Near Field Communication, is a short-range wireless communication technology based on a radio frequency field. It is perfectly designed to exchange data between two devices that are at a distance of a few centimeters through a simple touch gesture. It is what makes our mobile phones, tablets, wearables, payment cards, and other devices even smarter. With NFC, we can transfer information between devices quickly and easily with a single touch whether paying bills, exchanging business cards, downloading coupons, or sharing a brochure.
Mobile payments have been successfully introduced in Europe, experiencing significant user and usage growth over the last years. People spend a lot of time on their mobile phones and take advantage of advances in technology. The mobile wallet and mobile payments first started around 2012. Recently, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people using mobile payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay services.
Coupons
With the mobile wallet, people can keep their credit, debit, and prepaid cards, store cards, boarding passes, event tickets, coupons, loyalty cards, and more in one place. And use for instance the boarding passes on the mobile phone to check-in for flights. Or view the balance on their coffee card. And get to events, or redeem discount coupons.
Yes, discount coupons. The word “coupon” is of French origin, however, it is believed that the ticket for a free glass of Coca-Cola distributed in 1888 to be the first marketing coupon ever. It helped promote the drink as people had redeemed 8.5 million of them during the next couple of years. Nowadays, billions of coupons are redeemed every year. People love to coupon. Many even actively look for coupons wherever they can be found.
But clipping coupons from newspapers is a hassle, right? Same with printing digital coupons at home. The mobile wallet technology makes coupon-clipping with scissors and print-at-home digital coupons an old-fashioned strangeness.
Build An Engaging Loyalty Program With Mobile Coupons
It feels great when people choose your business, right? I guarantee you it feels even better when they choose your business every single time. How can a small business ensure that it is at the top of the list? Well, you don’t want to launch a mobile app because developing, maintaining, and regularly updating of such an app is very costly. It is also very difficult to reach a significant number of customers that way. People will simply not use another app anyway. The reality is that people spend the majority of their time on just a few apps. But your customers look to stay in touch with your business. So why don’t you shake things up?
Mobile wallet technology enables start-ups and small businesses to build and run an engaging loyalty program in a very cost-efficient manner. A mobile wallet based loyalty program requires no app development and saves you a lot of time and money. You can start with mobile coupons that are saved in your customers’ mobile wallets such as Apple Wallet or Google Pay. In general, mobile coupons can offer various types of values, such as discounts, free giveaways, buy-one-get-one, launch offers, first-time customer coupons, free trial offers, and many more. You can use them to drive traffic to your place, and keep your customers in the loop by delivering relevant alerts and updates on their lock screen. In the exact places or time where or when your customers need them. They then can redeem their mobile coupons by presenting them on their mobile phones.
Help your customers to stay connected by offering a mobile coupon when they are in your brick and mortar or e-commerce locations. Everyone likes a deal. Mobile coupons are more convenient than paper coupons. But people need to feel that the deal is good enough to take action and redeem it. You have to still reach out to people at the right time, with the right message. Engage customers through personalized mobile experiences – use mobile coupons with unique verification codes and expiration dates for incentivizing purchases, reducing prices, or providing free samples. A few weeks later after the redemption expiration, update the mobile coupon with a new deal.
After your new loyalty program is up and running thanks to mobile coupons, you can choose to extend by a mobile stamp card, or a mobile point-based rewards card, or even a mobile gift card, that all would also be saved in your customers’ mobile wallets.
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Ladislav Poledna inspires readers to “Become Digital” by publishing materials about digital marketing in his Prague Monitor column and aptly named blog. He has built a career around developing successful customer relationships for the past two decades. At present, Ladislav manages the Power Solutions division of a Fortune 1000 company in Central and Eastern Europe and also oversees operations of the producer’s regional office in Prague. Recently, he co-founded a B-to-B software service company making mobile marketing affordable and easy to use. Ladislav’s philanthropic contribution consists of a long-term relationship with a charity focused on funding dreams for people with muscular dystrophy.
Becomedigital.life
Mobile phones are long becoming the main “screen” in peoples’ lives. Mobile marketing is no longer an innovation but a part of important decisions. Read articles on mobile marketing to get inspired on how to connect with people where they spend a lot of their time. Become Digital.
