A pair of retail-related stories.
First, from Forrester, 72% of retail sales are still expected to take place in brick-and-mortar stores in 2024, but the retail world is preparing for more technology and fewer humans in those transactions. That included “buy online, pick up in-store,” “buy online, return in-store,” as well as “reserve online, pick up in-store” – and cashierless technologies.
And with that, Bloomberg is reporting that iPhones may soon accept payments without extra hardware.
Why do we care?
Any providers dealing with retail-focused solutions will care about these moves here. The trend of retail away from using people and towards automation is part of the more significant trend to automation.
That Apple RMM-type offering covered previously? Point of sale. Apple has big designs on the point of sale and payment processing space and will be a factor in these solutions. That’s the way to these moves. They’ll get SMB focused management as a byproduct, but the focus is point of sale and payment processing.