Who is a Merchant?
The retailer store that you walk-in to shop is called a Merchant in payment speak. You can broadly categorize them into two types based on channel.
Brick & Mortar merchants, also called as physical merchants, have a physical store. You would walk in to the store and purchase items by swiping a card at the physical point of sale (POS) device. In the context of mobile payments, they may also allow you to Tap & Pay using your mobile NFC device. In a restaurant kind of setup, you would typically hand over your card to the waiter instead of walking up to the counter. In such establishments, you may also scan a QR code to pay using your mobile. We will discuss Tap & Pay and QR code based mobile payments in upcoming posts.
Online merchants – both eCommerce and mCommerce, do not have a physical store. To make a purchase, you would visit their website and use a virtual shopping cart. Depending on how much you frequent that merchant, you may choose to type in your credit card details every time you purchase, or choose to store your card on their file, so that you can just select a stored card to pay. In addition to the above, you may also use a digital wallet (or mobile wallet) to make a purchase without entering your card details everytime and without storing your card with the merchant themselves.
These days, almost all physical merchants also have an online presence and mobile presence thereby transforming themselves into omni-channel merchants.
Mobile Payments Blog Series
Welcome to the Mobile payments FAQ and not so FAQ series and you are on FAQ #3. The idea behind this series is to share and learn as much as possible about the field of mobile payments. If you like, you can read all of the FAQs on the Mobile Payments category or by visiting the Table of contents page.
