Retailers look for DIY solution to m-commerce confusion

If you want something doing... do it your self. That’s what my mum always used to say, and it is no doubt the advice of the mothers of the heads of e-commerce at some of America’s biggest retailers, who this week have announced that they are to work together to develop their own m-commerce platform and payments solutions in an attempt to by-pass the ever-more complex morass of technology providers that are leading to huge confusion within the retail community as they all look to go mobile.

Under the banner Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), 7-Eleven, Target, Wal-mart, BestBuy, Sears, AVC and eight other retailers have joined forces to develop a mobile payments application that will be easy to integrate into existing payment back ends and, it is hoped, be so easy to use that it will kick start the mobile payment revolution in stores.

The bold move is a line in the sand for the many other payments providers out there vying for position as the de facto mobile payments standard. Already banks, network operators and the likes of Google, Square, Mobile Money Network and more are all looking to corner the market in mobile payments.

The establishment of a retail-backed consortium means battle is joined. And one can’t help but wonder if the retail industry’s own offering is a shoe-in as the winner in this fight. The retailers in the US who comprise MCX between them have millions of customers and, since they are doing it themselves for their own businesses will have a much better grasp on what they want to get out of it. It will also, probably, cost them a lot less.

Or as Wal-mart puts it: “MCX will leverage mobile technology to give consumers a faster and more convenient shopping experience while eliminating unnecessary costs for all stakeholder.”

Such a move also gives shoppers the confidence to use the service as they will see it in many of the best known stores across the US, giving a much needed fillip to the mobile payments idea. And it avoids the tricky issue of ‘who owns the customer’; something that has dogged any tie up so far between banks, telcos, third parties (bar perhaps PayPal) and retailers to deliver effective mobile payments.

Little else is known about MCX currently, but this is perhaps one of the most significant moves in m-retailing since, well, the invention of m-retailing. Suddenly retailers are empowered to run the payments side of m-commerce in their stores andon their sites and can develop a solution that suits them very specifically.

It also opens up the possibility of kicking many other payment tools into the long grass – and perhaps even scuppers NFC – in the short term.

Personally, I believe that what is more likely is that it will be the much needed boot in the trousers that the telcos, banks and payment companies need. Rather than all competing to become one of a confusing panopoly of payment tools nestling as apps on phones, quickly forgotten and never used, they will be inspired to work with this group to integrate the best bits of their technology into a single payment tool.

Outside the US, we should all watch this initiative with bated breath. If it succeeds then it needs to be replicated everywhere for the best of breed payment ideas to be integrated into a truly universal payment tool so that I can have just one payment app on my phone and for m-commerce to reach its true potential.

Of course this move will have huge repurcussions for the telemedia industry as it involves payments, primarily, but also m-commerce in general. Its impact on telcos could be huge and billing companies need to take note. And we will be debating this at length in the payments and retail & m-commerce sessions at WORLD TELEMEDIA MARBELLA (17-19 October), so book your place to help work out how we work with retailers and not lose this huge opportunity.