Online Payments Go Offline

A few years back, it seemed inconceivable that the trust of cold hard cash, or the VISA/MasterCard/AMEX stamp of approval, could be replicated by an online equivalent. If you couldn’t touch it or feel it, it was hard to imagine our everyday methods of payment being usurped.

Fast forward a few years (and a few hundred million smart phone user) to 2012, and the landscape is surprisingly different! Not only are people paying for their cup of coffee at Starbucks with an app, but just the other day I pulled into my local Cumberland Farm gas station / minimart and was presented with an option to pay with PayPal! On top of that, I was tempted with the offer of saving 5 cents per gallon if I kept my cash and credit cards safely tucked in my wallet.

Now, after doing a bit of reading I was able to get a clearer picture of how this initiative came to be, and a sense of the future of it. No doubt, it’s another of many recent and future attempts by online payment methods (PayPal being the most prominent) to integrate themselves into daily offline purchases.

As each retail merchant knows, credit card processing fees can quickly add up – as more and more consumers decide to pay not just with credit cards, but with even more cutting edge replacements (Starbucks apps, paypal, etc), it’ll be even more important that you are working with a merchant provider that keeps pace with technology and pricing innovations, to help mitigate the costs, risks, and challenges of payment methods moving from the online to the offline space!


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