Now, to be fair, some delegates at the 2016 cryptocurrency conference Consensus were sceptical when I shared my preferred strategy for securing my digital dosh, which was to convert the security key into a QR code and have it tattooed onto my scrotum. You could see them questioning my grasp of the relevant risk models and questioning my confidence in the technology. I was not dismayed by their negative reaction. In fact, I had suggested this approach to managing privates keys (sic) before and had toyed with the idea of patenting this breakthrough in cyber defence but sadly never got round to it. Now I am kicking myself about it, because I was delighted to read in the New York Times that numerous people of an innovative bent have indeed had QR code tattoos and… guess what, they work.
Well then… RFID chip implants or QR code tattoos? What is the right choice for the discerning cryptocurrency manager on the go? In truth I am somewhat conservative, so I am still using my Bitbox USB hardware wallet but perhaps I should be more happening and down with the kids on this one. So, let’s look at the pluses and minuses.
Plus and Minus
On the plus side, can be read passively and at a distance, can generate digital signatures and can store a reasonable amount of data. On the minus side, if you are kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel they will cut it out of you and send it as proof of capture to your nearest and dearest along with a Bitcoin random demand.
On the plus side, everyone uses QR codes. I mean everyone uses QR codes in the UK (and the USA) now, whereas in the old days it was everyone in China. There are two reasons for this: COVID-19 and Apple. A couple of years ago, Apple changed the iPhone software so that you could scan QR codes with your iPhone camera and not have to run a separate app. At a stroke, gazillions of people gained the ability to automagically enagage in contact-free transactions, while shortly afterwards along came the pandemic and the demand for contact-free transactions for everything, not only shopping. It’s not all down to Apple, of course. The cameras in mobile phones have improved across the board so that QR codes can be scanned clearly from a safe distance so that consumers can stand a couple of metres away from the point of sale and buy without using cash. On the minus side, QR codes are insecure and easy to copy. This means that they are a security problem and the pandemic has indeed presaged a variety of scams.
One place where I’ve been very interested to see the emerging dynamics is retail point of sale. A few years ago, I was of the general opinion that QR code for payments would fade away because tapping with cards or phones was quicker and more secure. But one retailer after another began to start using QR instead of NFC, partly because they didn’t want consumers to have to understand how to turn on and use NFC in smartphones and partly because Apple wouldn’t let them access payment interfaces in iPhones anyway. When the biggest retailers decided to go QR instead of contactless, you could see which way the wind was blowing. Walmart, to take the obvious example, introduced QR into Walmart Pay. Instead of selecting Walmart Pay at checkout, customers can now scan a QR code and Walmart Pay is connected so that customers can pay contact-free.
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Much of the restaurant industry’s investments in in-store tech have gone toward contactless payment solutions through QR codes or tableside ordering technology to minimize customer contact with restaurant workers
From How restaurants are bringing tech to the table in 2021 | Restaurant Dive:
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When you’re able to match service levels with demand through self-service technology… we see customer satisfaction going up, we see average order size going up and we see labor costs going down
Check In
In strategic terms, my strawman assumption going back five years was that retailers were going to get rid of payments at POS and shift to payments inside their own apps, apps that they use to deliver better customer services. Or, in the bumper-sticker version, “we’re going from check-out to check-in”. This is where the supermarket chains went in the UK, where Tesco became “the latest grocer to develop its own technology to bypass the costly Android and Apple systems” and Sainsbury’s was trialling its SmartShop app which allows users to create their own shopping lists, navigate stores and make payments at dedicated kiosks. In the UK, Tesco has just announced that their mobile payment app Pay+ has now taken its first billion in payments.
As with other retailers, one of the attractions for customers is that the app combines payments, loyalty and spend tracking in one and a simple quick QR code completes transactions. I’m sure this combination (and, if I remember correctly, prescriptions) is what attracts consumers to using the CVS app, where shoppers will be able to scan a QR code on their phones to pay using stored debit or credit cards, bank accounts, PayPal balance, PayPal Credit, Venmo balance or Venmo Rewards.
On my phone now I have Shell app and a BP app that combine payments with loyalty. My Waitrose app doesn’t, so I don’t use it (my Waitrose loyalty card is in my Apple Pay wallet). How many apps will I end up with! Well, not that many. I remember a Comscore survey that found that 55% of American consumers would be happy to have four or more retailer apps on their phone. Now, I don’t remember the figures exactly, and a quick search on my laptop can’t find them, but I remember something I looked at for a UK client a around that same time where it turned out that something like 90% of household disposable income in the UK goes to five retailers per household. In my house, for example, a Waitrose app, the BP app, a Martins’ newsagent app, a Boots app and my Tesco app pretty much take care of things.
In the in-app vision of the future, consumers wouldn’t have hundreds of apps for every retailer. For the retailers they visit frequently (e.g., Starbucks) they will have the retailer app and use it. In other cases they will just use some third-party payment app (e.g., their bank) or a convenient wearable like a bracelet or key fob. This focus on what I started to call app-and-pay instead was hardly new and was an obvious strategic focus long before Tim Cook stood up on stage to explains “the benefits of Apple Pay in apps” so I was hardly reading the tea leaves by saying that tapping and paying with mobile phones may not, in the great scheme of things, be that important because, online and offline will converge to app-and-pay not tap-and-pay.
But there’s one more change coming that will really impact the retail experience. When I use a retailer app at check out, it is super convenient and quick. But what would be much better is using the app to check in as well. If I scanned my Tesco app at the door on the way in, to instantly pull up my Tesco app, then they could deliver me a much more personalised and focused shopping experience: it doesn’t help me or Tesco that they don’t find out until I leave. There’s a whole range of fintech opportunities coming up to transform the check in, not the check out.
Snippings 