Eye on In-Store Commerce: Adyen Comes to the POS; Diebold Eyes Mobile Checkout

E-commerce processor Adyen Inc. announced on Thursday it is now offering payments capability for physical stores in the United States, a move that follows the company’s success in providing a payments gateway for a number of prominent digital clients, including Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, and Netflix.

Also on Thursday, ATM maker Diebold Inc. said it has developed a system that allows customers in stores to use a mobile phone and a terminal for self-checkout.

Adyen, a Netherlands-based company with U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, entered the North American market early in 2010 and has steadily grown its base of U.S. e-commerce clients. It has offered in-store payments processing in Europe for several years. Now it says it will handle payments at the point of sale in the U.S. on a wide range of card brands, including American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa, as well as debit card brands such as Pulse and Star.

The company, which is aiming the new service at so-called omnichannel merchants that operate physical as well as online stores, will also manage functions such as letting in-store customers order out-of-stock merchandise online and online customers return items at the store. The latter move can help control fraud losses stemming from online customers who return merchandise at a physical outlet but don’t present the payment card they originally used, the company says.

Adyen says a number of its clients, including some apparel retailers as well as Mango, Crocs, and Domino’s Pizza, have already begun using the new service, which is EMV-compliant, in “multiple markets.” Worldwide, Adyen processes for 4,500 merchants. It handled $50 billion in volume last year.

With its introduction in the U.S. market, the in-store solution clears away years of accumulated technical obstacles that have hampered efforts to tie together payments and related data between e-commerce and in-store transactions, the company says. “The $22 trillion retail industry has been on the verge of delivering a true omnichannel shopping experience for years, but outdated and siloed payment systems have been in the way,” Pieter Van der Does, co-founder and chief executive of Adyen, said in a statement.

“I believe the U.S. market is waiting for a true omnichannel solution,” Adil Moussa, principal at Omaha, Neb.-based payments consultancy AdilConsulting, tells Digital Transactions News via email. “Solutions that lower friction between marketing, sales, and fulfillment help elate customers and that’s what merchants are looking for. Adyen is a welcome addition to the U.S. market.”

Adyen levies the same fee for POS transactions that it charges for e-commerce payments, 10 cents plus 0.6%, according to a spokesperson. As is usually the case in processing, larger volumes fetch somewhat lower pricing.

Diebold’s new system, which it will showcase next week at the National Retail Federation show in New York City, allows customers to scan items in a store using a mobile phone and then pay for them by tapping the phone at a contactless terminal near the exit. Payment flows from a card stored in the merchant’s mobile app or customers can insert cash in the terminal.

“We see many similarities between the worlds of banking and retail. Our omnichannel expertise has enabled us to reimagine the use of our fast, secure ATM technology to power the new, mobile-enabled self-checkout,” said Frank Natoli, Diebold executive vice president for self-service technology, in a statement.