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As listening devices publicly compete for
market share, business leaders expect to see
aggressive discounts, price wars and product
offers designed to entice consumers to acquire
and enable digital assistants.
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Galloway explores emerging retail
trends in The Four: The Hidden DNA
of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,
a business bestseller that reads like
a thriller. The book foreshadows a
retail ecosystem built on artificial
intelligence, machine learning and
technology. Its predictions serve as a
wake-up call for payments industry
veterans who built empires out of
clicks, because clicks are going away
forever, Galloway believes.
"In the short term, Go and Echo
suggest the company [Amazon] is
headed toward zero-click order-
ing across its operations," he wrote.
"Leveraging big data and unrivaled
knowledge of consumer purchasing
patterns, Amazon will soon meet
your need for stuff, without the fric-
tion of deciding or ordering." This
scenario, which Galloway dubbed
"Prime Squared," will send monthly
shipments of products, based on cus-
tomer preferences and ordering his-
tories.
MLSs who rebrand as business con-
sultants will be well positioned to
survive and thrive in a zero-click
economy, said George Sarantopou-
los, Chief Executive Officer at Access
One ATM Inc. and National ATM
Council Inc. Chair. Amazon and oth-
er leading brands will continue to le-
verage big data by anticipating cus-
tomer needs based on information
consumers have willingly shared.
As algorithms replace clicks, intelli-
gent systems will replace dumb POS
devices, he noted.
"Instead of the psychic 'precogs' in
the tank in Minority Report or the
telepaths in X-Men movies, the real
superpowers will be algorithms that
are able to accurately predict all our
wants and needs before we even
know we have them," he said. "Ev-
ery day, these 'algos,' with their deep
learning, are getting better and bet-
ter at figuring us out."
Dale S. Laszig, Senior Staff Writer at The
Green Sheet and Managing Director at DSL
Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist
and content provider. She can be reached at
dale@dsldirectllc.com and on Twitter at @
DSLdirect.