Mobile payment solutions are transitioning into a more commonly used payment practice, with Android Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay all having launched in multiple regions with loads of stores already supporting them. While there is still plenty of room to grow and more banking partners to add, the services are all decent alternatives to paying with your physical cards. Even PayPal can be used at some locations. Just recently Walmart announced their own mobile payment app for customers to use, but it will only work inside of Walmart when shopping at their locations. A new report now suggests that another major retailer is working on its own mobile payment solution.
Target is said to have plans for their own mobile payment app, which would work much in the same way as the Walmart app, where customers could purchase the products and items they need using the app on their phone. At the moment the app has not been confirmed by Target Corp. but it is said to be in the stages of early development so it wouldn’t be launching anytime soon. According to people who are “familiar with the matter” the app has a tentative launch time frame of 2016 at the earliest, but there is also a possibility that it could be released much later.
The Target app would not work like the other popular and already available solutions, and instead of utilizing tap to pay it would make use of the scanning technology that would be installed at the checkouts of all Target retail stores, where a barcode in the app could be scanned and payment transferred. Although many retailers are opting to support the currently existing mobile payment apps, Target deciding to develop their own for customers suggests that they might prefer to keep the mobile payment for their stores in-house, although no details have given as to whether or not Target would support other options like Android Pay on top of their own offering. With businesses looking to bring their own mobile payment solutions to the table, perhaps now consumers will finally start to see a much wider adoption of the services, which has been a struggle for mobile payments in the past.