A number of large-scale retailers have begun looking into delivering card-based services (that is, gift cards or loyalty cards) on a smart phone, rather than on a piece of plastic. While the convenience of having access to the services inherent in the card without actually having to carry the card are obvious to the consumer, it actually makes more sense for the retailers to shift their focus away from smart phone as the delivery framework and focus instead on providing the service through the cloud. By doing this, they expand their reach beyond the 15% of the market that uses smart phones, and can now tap into the other 85% of mobile users who use feature phones that includes web access.

The other advantage of course is ease of integration; once information about consumers and the choices they make are kept in a cloud framework rather than a “rack mounted, behind the firewall, supported by IT” model, integration across disparate touchpoints becomes much more straightforward, and presumably provides retailers with a better understanding of consumer habits and requirements, which in turn would lead to a better customer experience.