6. How it works
As with a credit card, a mobile payment will be accepted or declined immediately upon payment. Different mobile payment systems call for different protocol from the customer. Some will require a signature or a pin entry. "This depends on the store and transaction amount," said Hubbard. "For Apple devices, customers must scan their fingerprint on their mobile device in order to use Apple Pay."
7. Be mindful of security risks
Digital wallets carry far less risk that physical wallets because they have more layers of security than plastic credit cards.
"In accordance with EMV chip card readers, Apple Pay and Android Pay facilitate secure transaction through tokenization, which instantly converts sensitive card holder data into indecipherable code at the point of sale. The trio of EMV, Tokenization and P2PE work together to form the proverbial "Holy Grail" of any secure payment transaction," said Jeremy Gumbley, CTO of payment services provider Creditcall.
But security breaches can still occur. Recently, LoopPay, a mobile wallet subsidiary of Samsung Pay, was hacked into, and while the hackers appear to have only broken into the corporate network, and did not infiltrate costumer data, the incident shook the faith of many mobile payment loyalists.
Such a massive hacking can't really be helped at a local merchant level, but Don Bush, VP of marketing at fraud and risk protection company Kount, says businesses can do their part by "talking with fraud teams to understand both the risks and rewards [of mobile pay]."
If there is an instance of fraud, [it] is treated in the same way as your current credit and debit transactions," said Hubbard.
It's not quite worthy of a spot on this listicle, but another thing SMBs should do is…be excited, and show that zeal to your customers. If they use it, chances are they're feeling psyched about mobile pay, too. And research shows that the path you're embarking on will only become more widely traveled upon.
"Our data shows that the average online and in-store transaction amounts were greater than those on mobile devices overall until the first six months of 2015, in which purchases on the iPhone ($129.94) and iPad ($164.19) began to exceed non-mobile transactions ($106.94)," said Bush.
