Deloitte Sees Rise of ‘Touch Commerce’

In a new market report, Deloitte is heralding the rise of ‘touch commerce’ – digital payment systems that let customers conduct transactions through their mobile devices’ fingerprint scanners. The financial consulting firm predicts that this year alone, the number of consumers regularly performing such transactions will reach 50 million, an increase of 150 percent.

That’s because it makes mobile ordering so much easier, since biometric profiles can essentially replace the complex cardholder information needed for such transactions. Deloitte asserts that one merchant has reported reducing its app’s checkout process from 103 seconds to 17 seconds, for example.

Most of this takes place via smartphones featuring embedded digital wallets, such as newer iPhones. Deloitte asserts that there are “billions” of such devices on the market today. But such transactions are also taking place via payment services that first register user credentials, and then allow subsequent purchases with the tap of a finger.

Deloitte’s predictions track with others like those made by Juniper Research in a report issued at the end of August, in which the market research firm predicted that Apple Pay and Android Pay purchases would rise in value from $540 million this year to $8 billion in 2018.

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September 27, 2016 – by Alex Perala