A few years ago in most retail stores, close to 100 percent of the shoppers were paying for goods with cash or by swiping or dipping their credit cards into a contact-only POS terminal. Walk into a retail store today and customers now pay by scanning a QR code or tapping their contactless card, smartphone or wearable device. Many more do not even enter a store and purchase their goods online with pickup or delivery options. Gas may even be paid by a car’s computer system!
Although consumers today can purchase goods in many ways via the traditional shopping models, the future shopping experience will go beyond what was once imagined. Here are some unique buying channels on the rise:
E-commerce has taken off and introduced numerous new payment methods such as e-wallets and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL). The BNPL model started in e-commerce but is now used in brick and mortar stores as well. In the traditional online shopping journey, the consumer pays first, and then the goods are shipped. With BNPL, this paradigm is inverted: the consumer first receives the goods, and then pays. This means that not only is there a new channel to shop in (e-commerce); there is also a new point in time when the actual payment occurs (after the goods have arrived).
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