EuropShop 2020 to Highlight Mobile Payment

Payment Apps and digital wallets are conquering smartphones and smart watches changing shoppers’ payment preferences. Payment should be fast and convenient – preferably anywhere and without standing in line. EuroShop 2020, The World’s No.1 Retail Trade Fair, will address this trend and showcase innovative solutions for mobile payment and check-out solutions in its Retail Technology Dimension from February 16 – 20, 2020 at the fairgrounds in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Companies such as the Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn with “Albert Hejn to Go” or Swiss convenience specialist with “avec box” have opened the first checkout-free convenience stores in their home countries. Merchandise is captured and paid for by shoppers themselves via smartphone. At Saturn in Hamburg, Germany shoppers were also able to scan and pay for articles right at the shelf during the 2018 Christmas season. Assembly and fastener wholesaler Würth has recently started to allow commercial customers to also shop in its unmanned outlets outside of opening hours. Smartphones serve as digital door openers and virtual loyalty cards.

Solutions for Stores without Checkout

According to Andreas Starzmann, Director Digital Office of Wanzl convenience, digitalization and urbanization are three of the mega trends that will decisively shape physical retail: “Growth will occur especially in new formats.” The German company has already perfectly geared up for change. Supplying technical turn-key solutions for digitalized retailers, Wanzl takes care of changing over some 520 of Würth’s outlets across Germany to hybrid operation with and without staff, among other projects. At EuroShop 2020, visitors can learn about self-service solutions such as access control lanes or scan tunnels. Wanzl will also exhibit technologies required by convenience stores without checkouts such as computer vision, sensor technology and smart shelves.

Apple Pay and Google Pay lend Wings to Mobile Payment

The driver and “groundbreaker” for digital change in retail is the smartphone: it has developed from a telephone into a multi-functional everyday companion – complete with payment functions.

Not least with the launch of Google Pay and Apple Pay in mid and late 2018 respectively, the topic of mobile payment has gained considerable momentum.  In a consumer survey conducted in early 2019, strategy consultancy Oliver Wyman already detected changes in payment behavior, although at the time of the survey only few banks supported the digital wallets offered by these two Internet giants. Especially savings and cooperative banks, which together handle the vast majority of German checking accounts, placed their own payment Apps on the market instead. Here bank customers can also use their ‘girocard’ for mobile payments instead of a credit card. Accounting for more than 30% of retail turnover, the girocard has ranked top and been unrivalled in cashless payments in Germany for many years.

Depending on the mobile operating system, credit card and bank details, there are still limits to mobile payment: The widely used Girocard, for example, only works in the payment apps of Volksbanks and Sparkassen. These in turn were only available for Android smartphones until recently because Apple refused to release the NFC interface required for mobile payment by third-party payment Apps for a long time. And the digital wallets by Apple and Google are still far from accepting every credit card.

But the barriers are falling and more shoppers will in future be able to pay with their smartphones at the store check-out: cooperative and savings banks plan to introduce Apple Pay by late 2019. In return girocards can also be used with the iOS-Wallet starting in 2020. German Google Pay users can already use a Paypal account today for mobile payment at the POS. By their own accounts, Paypal register some 23 million users in Germany and therefore have more cards issued in Germany than Visa (16 m) or Mastercard (18 m).

In Five Years One in Four Payments will be Mobile

As more straightforward mobile payment options become available the use of smartphones at the POS will increase. According to the study “Mobile in Retail 2019” by GS1 Germany, the retailers surveyed expect almost one in four payments at the POS to be mobile in Germany in five years from now. “We expect the smartphone to replace the card in the medium term, similar to other technologies such as navigation and photography, “ confirms Volkmar Bloch of payment service provider Ingenico. The required hardware, he adds, is now available across the board in retail, most card terminals have supported NFC for contactless card payment and mobile smartphone-based payment for many years. 

In addition to NFC-enabled cards and smartphones, shoppers can also use so-called wearables for paying at NFC terminals, such as NFC-enabled smart watches or fitness trackers. This is especially convenient because as long as the wearable is worn payments can be made – as a rule – without any additional authentication, with the flick of a wrist, so to speak. In future, even garments or pieces of jewelry could be equipped with NFC payment functions.

Smartphones as Mobile Checkouts

At EuroShop 2020 payment providers such as Adyen, CCV, Ingenico or Wirecard as well as the bank-owned service providers S-Payment (savings banks) and VR Payment (cooperative banks) will not only exhibit the current generation of NFC-enabled terminals for stationary use, but also solutions to accept mobile smartphone payments. The prerequisite for this is either a portable payment terminal with Wifi or mobile radio interface or a mobile checkout App (mPOS). Payment recipients (e.g. retailers, hair stylist, taxi drivers) install them on their smartphones or Tablets, which are connected to an NFC card reader via Bluetooth. Such mobile solutions are suited as “lean checkout alternatives” for small or mobile retail or service firms, for mobile sales at trade fairs, markets, major events, private shopping parties or pop-up stores but also as extra checkouts quickly available in peak hours. 

Chinese pay by QR-Code

QR-code based mobile payments can also be accepted by App and Tablet or smartphone. Using the mPOS app, for example, Wirecard offers German retailers a simple, technically uncomplicated variant for offering Chinese customers their preferred payment methods Alipay and Wechat Pay.  “Nearly all Chinese travelers have both Apps installed on their smartphones and use both actively,” says Anna Kostense, Team Leader for the China Payment business at Wirecard. For payments Chinese shoppers generate a QR-code on their smartphones which is scanned by the retailer. The camera of the retailer’s mobile device serves as a scanner for the mobile Wirecard solution – the payment is then processed in the App.

From Mobile Payment to Self-Checkout

With the increasing spread and acceptance of mobile payment methods, the mobile self-checkout will gain in importance, such as Valora or Albert Heijn already offer today at selected locations. At EuroShop 2020 attendees can visit Snabble or Roqqio Commerce Solutions, for example, to learn about cross-retailer solutions. The Snabble App is being used at Knauber, at IKEA in Frankfurt and at Edeka Paschmann in Mühlheim an der Ruhr. However, payment is not made in the store but at self-service checkouts in the exit area. The Roqqio BuyBye app also has its first pilot customers in Germany and Switzerland. “Like in a webshop a wide variety of payment methods can be stored in the App,” explains Johannes Schick, CEO at ROQQIO (formerly höltl). The options ‘purchase on account’ or ‘payment at the check-out’ are also possible.

Security concerns (theft), age rating (e.g. for alcohol, tobacco and DVDs) as well as the removal of tags from merchandise after payment are some of the central issues that retail companies face when it comes to checkout systems. At EuroShop 2020 start-ups like Rapitaq and well-established companies such as Nedap or SES Imagotag will present connected, digital smart labels capable of combining pricing, with marketing and automatic article surveillance.

EuroShop 2020 will present innovations for the entire retail sector on about 1.3 million square feet of net exhibition space. Entrance passes can be purchased online at www.euroshop-tradefair.com at reduced rates: 1-day tickets cost Euro 60 each (Euro 80 on show site), 2-day tickets are Euro 100 (Euro 120 purchased on show site) and 5-day tickets cost Euro 150  (Euro 180 at the show). Tickets include free use of all publication within the VRR transport system to and from EuroShop.

For EuroShop’s online magazine with news, interviews, reports, technical articles, studies, photo galleries and videos related to topics and trends in the international retail sector all year visit  https://mag.euroshop.de/en/

For further information on visiting or exhibiting at EuroShop 2020, contact Messe Düsseldorf North America, Telephone: (312) 781-5180; E-mail: info@mdna.com; Visit www.euroshop-tradefair.com and www.mdna.com; Follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/mdnachicago

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