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J.P. Morgan Payments sees the future of electronic commerce as one pipeline accessed by consumers across channels. Its role in that scenario is outlined by the debut earlier this year of what it calls a full-stack omnichannel service, one that offers in-store, online, and mobile checkout capabilities.
“We realized merchants more and more want to provide their customers an experience,” Jean-Marc Thienpont, managing director of omnichannel & biometric solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, tells Digital Transactions News. The goal is not one that simply is an e-commerce or in-store experience, “not a siloed experience,” he says.
“The second thing is we realized is that consumers want a self-centered experience, they want to be recognized,” Thienpont says. To accomplish that usually requires merchants to not only have a payment processor, but a gateway to capture online transactions, plus loyalty or marketing providers, which could result in five or six entities in the value chain, he says. “That’s why we need to have the full-stack solution,” he says.
Announced earlier this year, the service entails offering J.P. Morgan Payments across in-store, online, and mobile channels so that merchants can use one access point to see their consumer-transaction and marketing data.
Thienpont says merchant setup is handled via API codes. The service is available to enterprise down to mid-size merchants and available directly from J.P. Morgan Payments.
One early adopter of this approach was Sephora, the beauty retailer, which adopted J.P. Morgan Payments’ Tap to Pay on iPhone service last year.
Merchants can obtain acceptance devices from J.P. Morgan Payments or bring their own. Other costs include a recurring fee for support, a transaction fee, and the processing fee.
Biometric payments are another focus for J.P. Morgan Payments. Closely aligned with its omnichannel service, the biometrics service entails offering finger or face-based identification and authentication to authorize a payment.
Designed for in-store use, the service has four components: enroll, capture, authenticate, and pay.
This service doesn’t require a digital or physical card to make the payment, Prashant Sharma, executive director for biometrics and identity solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, tells Digital Transactions News.
“The technology has become more mature from where it was 10 years ago,” Sharma says. Consumers are used to opening their phones with their faces or fingers.
To use it—it’s configured for in-store payments—a consumer can scan a QR code with their smart phone or tap on a screen to authenticate with a biometric after completing a one-time enrollment step.
Biometric-identification specialist PopID provides the ID component of the service.
Consumers can save any credit or debit card as the payment instrument, Sharma says, with other options potentially becoming available. Once the enrollment is complete, no phone is needed to make a payment, he says.
Thienpont says these services are “fintech-grade” and are embedded within a bank. “All of these journeys are real experiences,” he says of the programs,” which are positive for the consumer and positive for the merchants because they never missed a sale.”
