Consumers’ increasing adoption and normalization of the Smartphone have coincided with the increased usage of digital wallets, gradually usurping the ubiquitous presence of plastic debit and credit cards. This adoption has replaced the tangibility of plastic with the virtual of the digital, heralding an emerging, cloud-centric era. As such, consumerism is going through constant change, subtly transforming the conduct and construct of commerce and personal business. This digitalized modification is happening in an ecosystem that eliminates its propensity for paper. Instead, it is promoting an era that usurps the ubiquitousness of physical debit and credit cards.
More than just speed
As consumers adopt these innovations, the digital wallet’s initial objectives move beyond its original sales pitch of speedier payments because the [digital] wallet is more than just an improved mechanism for consumers to shop, spend, save, and engage with their favourite retailers. Instead, it is a cognitive being more than a choice, a shift to embrace innovative technology surpassing the need for paper and palpability.
More than a swipe
As the digital wallet continuously evolves beyond capturing and replacing the paper ensnared within the consumers’ physical wallets, consumers continue to adapt to the digitalized changes. Today’s consumer is adept at swiping their favorite traditional, plastic debit and credit card(s). They swipe away because these cards have permeated Consumerism, pervasive to and for the consumer. They swipe because it has become a normalized habit, an accepted way of life.
Integrating the burden of card overload and fatigue
However, as swiping is a habitual second nature for modernity’s transactions, a specific issue plagues consumers and consumerism: their burden with their other cards, coupons, gift cards, and loyalty cards because these accepted cash/ card alternatives are legion in number, cluttered with the inconvenience of paper and restrictions.
A result of integrating these cards, IDs such as driver’s licenses, and alternative options for paper receipts into a digital, mobile wallet is the digitalized wallet’s point of difference. This integration offers the consumer convenience, redeeming merchants’ offers and loyalty rewards.
Effortlessly tracking loyalty points and rewards for the consumer and the merchant
Historically, when a consumer has loyalty points and rewards, the cards and opportunities get lost or misplaced in the labyrinth of excess paper hiding in physical wallets. This clutter is often inconvenient and wasted as forgotten or mislaid points and rewards expire and become obsolete. The digital wallet, however, can help consumers track their loyalty points and rewards, giving them seamless access to coupons, pop-up deals, rebates, and rebate submission options.
Merchants can use in-store technology to strengthen their retailer relationship with their consumer base, as the digital wallet is the perfect aggregator of offers. The value proposition for digital wallets has always been convenience and speed, but these added values propel consumers into a more mainstream adoption of them.
Digital platform engagement
Digital wallets provide a platform for consumers to use loyalty rewards offers that engage them with their [favorite] retailer(s). This engagement facilitates and promotes more transparent collaboration between parties, creating frictionless card-linked and wallet-linked offers and loyalty benefits to consumers and retailers. Youtap enables this collaboration, collectively as well as individually. The company has realized an opportunity to further the adaptation and acceptance of the digital wallet as loyalty programs and rewards continue to transition into a digital currency.
The future of payments is not exclusively mobile-centric
Consumer and marketplace pressure exists to provide more significant incentives for the programs’ transactions using their individualized digital wallets. As society heads towards becoming cashless, more digitally and virtually adroit. As digital wallets become more adept and engaged, the future of mobile payments will not become exclusively mobile-centric. Instead, the payment ecosystem will become a more unified and integrated experience, with digital devices, credit cards, debit cards, coupons, loyalty cards, rewards, and cash flowing seamlessly, inter-connected, and intertwined. Each facet is reliant on each other, complimenting and collective within the emerging FinTech ecosystem that is slowly transforming the way business is conducted.
