Will Best Buy’s Pushback Against Visa Contactless Payment Change The Market Or Is It Irrelevant?
Written by Evan Schuman and Fred J. AunOn the Best Buy side, though, many attendees at the National Retail Federation (NRF) conference were wondering whether the change would have much of an impact at all. One attendee compared the move to a hypothetical apparel retailer that is furious about children working in overseas sweatshops. To put an end to it, the apparel retailer would tell the supplier, "That's it! No more. I want you to take the pink frilly tuxedos with the Mod Squad characters sewn into the chest and get them out of here and don't bring me any more pink frilly tuxedos with the Mod Squad characters sewn into the chest until your suppliers have changed their practices. You can bring me lots of other clothes, but I am now drawing the line at pink frilly tuxedos with the Mod Squad characters sewn into the chest. It's for the children."
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3 Comments | Read Will Best Buy’s Pushback Against Visa Contactless Payment Change The Market Or Is It Irrelevant?
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January 14th, 2010 at 10:18 am
The real Best Buy message to fellow merchants: It is o.k. to say no to enhancements that increase costs – especially when there is no meaningful impact on the customer experience.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Funny how Visa talks about the “PIN slowing down the trasnaction”. The real reason Best Buy was unhappy is that customter using a contactless card was not given the option of using a PIN which makes the trasnaction a debit transaction and not a Visa transaction. The retailer only pays $.45-$.75 cents for a debit trasnaction reguardless of sale amount whereas a Visa transaction would have been 1.8% of the sale amount. Big savings in fees for Best Buy. Always follow the money, it is the only truth to why things change!!!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I applaud Best Buy’s stance here, but to think that the card methods will not advance in this direction is short sighted. Clearly VISA needs to overcome the interchange fee concerns, and the contactless payment method is bound to evolve and fold into cell phone payment.
VISA having to spend money on card innovation..costs money… why not leave things really cheap on the card manufacturing front and get the retailers and application vendors to pay for compliance projects and applications instead, and fine them when they’re too slow. Ah… sorry.. they’ve already done that.