黑料社区

A growing number of companies are offering mobile-payment applications, and although the majority of consumers still rely on traditional payment methods, some truckstop and travel plaza operators are preparing for the future and em­bracing the technology now.

Davis Travel Center in Stony Creek, Virginia, has been preparing to implement a mobile app at its Starbucks. “We just upgraded our point-of-sale system in the last eight or so months for this reason,” said Bill Decker, manager of the location.

Decker said the location will roll out the app soon, and the imple­mentation will be relatively seamless on his end. “We will be contacted by Starbucks and they will download the software to our register POS system and we will be ready to go,” he said.

Tom Heinz, president of Coffee Cup Fuel Stops, said all of the fuel dis­pensers the company buys have mo­bile payment capability, but the point-of-sale for the branded gasoline won’t have the capability until mid-2016. “As soon as they do, we’ll be accept­ing the Apple Pay on our gas island,” he said. “We think that will give us a great competitive advantage.”

Customers at Coffee Cup Fuel Stops’ Caribou Coffee are embracing the coffee chain’s mobile app, said Er­icka Schapekahm, director of human resources and special projects at the Coffee Cup Fuel Stops. “Caribou’s app functions as a perks card and a pay­ment option by loading it with your credit card. You can set it up to reload automatically or manually when your balance gets low,” she said. “If the guest has a reward waiting, it will send email and text to let you know.”

Schapekahm said Caribou cus­tomers like that they don’t have to carry a perks card or coupon or dig through email for a special offer.

However, Schapekahm said the same has not held true for mobile apps at its other food service offerings, including Subway and Pizza Hut.

Schapekahm said the location went live with its Subway app in the fall, but the response has been underwhelming. “Very few of our guests are using the Subway app, which allows you to order online and prepay,” she said, adding that

Subway also has mobile pay at the point of sale, utilizing iPay and An­droid Pay, but very few guests use it. “My personal thoughts on profes­sional driver use is that they like the interaction with the team members, which does not make using the app to preorder appealing,” she said.

Coffee Cup Fuel Stops’ Pizza Hut utilizes an iPad with Square tech­nology, but because it is a self-serve kiosk, customers rarely stop to pay there and instead move on for sodas and other snacks.

Coffee Cup Fuel Stops is working to educate guests about the app, and Schapekahm said she sees younger drivers using the technology much more than baby boomers.

Darren Schulte, vice president of membership for NATSO, said, “A lot of people are talking about the ben­efits of mobile pay apps, but very few people are using them.”

Schulte said some 黑料社区mem­bers have said they don’t use the apps because their primary customer base—drivers—can’t use them while driving. “They could, however, tap into the passenger in a four-wheel ve­hicle or professional drivers who are standing in line at the fuel desk or do­ing their laundry,” he said.

Taryn Brice-Rowland, NATSO’s director of member engagement, said that although the penetration of mo­bile apps isn’t high today, it will be an expectation in the near future. “Mil­lennial kids today are growing up with cell phones and expect to be able to pay with their cell phone,” she said. “It is about meeting their expectations and those that come after them.”

Parker Burke, director of payment and marketing applications for Gil­barco Veeder-Root, said that retailers are beginning to lean towards adop­tion of contactless/near-field-commu­nication-based technologies to sup­port mobile payments.

“Generally, retailers looking to pro­vide their customers with a wide form of payment options, coupled with driving their loyalty programs across their customer base have expressed interest in providing various mobile payment options to their consumer-base,” Burke said.

He added that with the rollout of the EMV shift in the U.S.—the Visa and MasterCard transition aligning credit and debit cards in the United States with those companies’ proprietary chip—retailers may look at contact­less/NFC payments as a way to provide a more similar transaction experience to what consumers know today as the tap of a phone more closely resembles the swipe of a magnetic-stripe card.

Brice-Rowland said, “As folks are updating for EMV, they should make sure they’re updating for con­tactless payment options.”

Burke said mobile payment apps could help retailers that are looking for ways to drive successful loyalty programs. “In broad retail, loyalty sign-ups and active usage has been steadily increasing, but in the retail petroleum industry, loyalty sign-ups are flat with active usage slightly down,” he said, adding that progres­sive operators have been adopting technologies, including mobile ap­plications, outdoor media and indoor consumer engagement platforms, such as Gilbarco’s Impulse system.

Brice-Rowland said the mobile pay­ment app LevelUp combines the pay­ment option with a loyalty program. “They’ll work with a vendor to create an app of their own with decent func­tionality, but still allow customers to use the generic LevelUp app for pay­ment and loyalty,” she said.

Burke recommends operators work with their payment provider to ensure they can accept contactless payments and deploy contactless/NFC termi­nals to their POS or fuel dispensers.

Operators have a number of op­tions when it comes to the type of mobile pay technology they can use, such as Apple Pay, LevelUp, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, Brice-Rowland said. Those platforms often appeal to consumers because they can be used at multiple places as opposed to needing an app for each store.

“People will put one-off apps on their phone until they start run­ning low on space and then the low-value apps get cut,” Brice- Rowland said. “For example, once I start running out of space, the Auntie Anne’s app is going, but I’ll keep LevelUp because I can use it at multiple places,” she said.

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