20 May 2015 at 11:27 | By Sarah Evans
What's been happening inside the Semble camp? It’s been around 7 weeks since we launched payments in Semble with our Mobile and Banking partners. We’ve now got several thousand customers demonstrating their Semble styles at contactless payment terminals around the country. To great fanfare too we’re told. “How did you do that” “Have you got a card on the back of your phone” or simply an astonished look! (As an aside, Semble is a great conversation starter for the singles out there .Tinder eat your heart out!)
We’re also hearing some fantastic Semble stories. The dad with begging, hungry kids at the ice cream van who realises he’s left his wallet at home…only to discover the van has a contactless terminal and he has his phone. The lady who fills her car up with petrol and realises with horror she’s left her fuel card at home. Whilst visualising a police escort from the forecourt she feels her phone in her pocket. We call those the Semble saves. Then there’s the successful Semble transaction completed at the duty free in Warsaw Poland - AKA the Semble bonus!
We often get asked about the number of contactless terminals around the country and what sort of progress we’re seeing there. We’ve been tracking it for the past two years at Semble and we’re seeing really solid and consistent growth. Almost 20% of active terminals around the country are now contactless. What we’re starting to see is habitual contactless behaviour. That’s driven in part by where those terminals are located. The fuel category is a really good example here. They’re all contactless, they’re frequently visited locations and they’re killing it volume wise. Don’t just take it from us though. Let’s look at the data. NZ did 2.2M contactless transactions in March 2014 and 7.1M transactions in March 2015. Not bad NZ, not bad. Retailers wanting to embrace new advances and innovations and a customer who is increasingly starting to actively seek out the convenience of a contactless experience, are driving change. The rest of the world is watching too as NZ and Australia lead the way.
So where to from here? We promised a world beyond payments. Actually, we promised a virtual mobile market place…. and we’re working really hard to make that happen. We’re pedal to the metal right now delivering Snapper in Semble. What does this mean? Today you can Snapper with your phone if you’re a 2degrees customer with a Touch2Pay SIM. When we launch you’ll be able to Snapper with Spark and Vodafone as well, so long as you have your Semble SIM. You’ll also be able to use your ASB and BNZ cards too. All via the Semble app. The benefits of collaboration!
That’s all for now folks…we’ll be back with some updates from the coal face real soon.
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