The industry has noticed stores entering new product territories, pivoting their business models, and digitizing their service offerings. These adaptations, perceived by many as transitory methods of staying afloat, set the stage for an entirely new industry.
Today, exactly three years after the outbreak of the pandemic, the retail landscape is very different than before. Perhaps the main driving force behind this update has been the widespread and immediate adoption of virtual technology.
E-commerce platforms and mobile apps have grown to meet customer conversion demands where physical stores cannot. Contactless or even faceless exchanges between merchants and their customers have become the norm. The speed of digitization, which had been expanding for more than a decade, has accelerated. And retail was in a position to ride the wave.
During the pandemic years, South Africans turned to mobile and online platforms because they were temporarily the safest answers to shopping. Retailers rose to the challenge and backed their generation with effective visitor service, fast order fulfillment, fast turnaround times, and reliable delivery.
Over time, as consumers became accustomed to this increased point of convenience and choice, what started as a desire became an expectation.
Today, South African buyers, just like their global counterparts, expect perfect comfort from start to finish. They expect to log in, buy and pay in record time. Fortunately, driven by innovation and a thirst to evolve to meet the desires of a developing market, startups and payment generation developers have helped answer this call.
Technologies such as virtual wallets are becoming popular among South African shoppers. In addition, with the dramatic growth of smartphone penetration, consumers need to make more transactions through their mobile phone.
Buyers need flexible payment features and credit plans, a trend we’ve noticed with RCS’s acquisition of leading virtual credit provider, Mobicred. in generation to make this possible.