European retailers are developing their own mobile payment options to help capture more data on their customers, reduce the queue length at checkout and deal with the age old costs of handling cash. The latter accounts for over half retail transactions by volume in Britain - is costly for retailers as it needs to be counted and guarded, costs equivalent to about 2.5 percent of takings, compared with about 2 percent for processing cheques and 1 percent for debit and credit cards.
Big retailers are muscling in on the likes of Visa, MasterCard and Google in a fiercely competitive and growing mobile payment market that promises to cut transaction costs and increase customer loyalty. Stores such as British supermarket Tesco and France's Auchan hope their "digital wallets" - apps which allow users to pay with their smartphones rather than cash or cards - will also give them more comprehensive data about customers' shopping habits than ever before so they can target advertising.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/04/06/retail-mobilepayment-idINL5N0J42F520140406